Two things: you wonder if you are burnt out still and it feels depressing to hunt ... When you are tired or have come off some exciting adventure (starting your own business) you have used up a lot of your reserves so total recall isn't, and if you didn't have total recall before it is worse. Suggeations I have taken: 1) get rested (later than 10:00 pm is too late for an old guy like me to hit a mental challange hitting a pillow is more productive) 2) as I learn or relearn a language, create code snippets showing how a particular type of code works. e.g. regex.pl contains a bunch of samples of regex usage, printing and so on, array.pl contains a bunch of fun stuff with arrays including sorts. 3)cut and paste as often as possible to get the job done. Improve your code as you go, and add to your code snippets as better ways are found. 4) forget about writing code up to the standard you set while in peak form - it ain't gonna happen. Sure, I could ride a century each weekend 2 years ago, but today with the 40 lbs back on, and legs out of practice, it would kill me. Now I must start riding smaller distances, work on diet and regain the skills and pysical shape nessecery to do what was easy 2 years ago. The benefit I have now is I know I can do it, I can do it better than I am doing it now, I know what I must do to get better, I know how much it will hurt to get there. Now decide - do I need to be as good as when I was in copmpetition shape, do I want to be in my current shape, or do I want to be in between. Decide where you want to be, then plan to get there in a reasonable amount of time. Stamping your foot, screaming I gotta be as good as I was is only going to hurt your foot and stress you out. Be reasonable with yourself, stress in excess will hurt your recovery speed. Do a job as well as you can and move on. Good luck Enjoy Perl Enjoy other things too! Da geek