Artistic Block

I vaguely remember reading about, or perhaps hearing on TV about a famous artist, a painter, who suffered from artistic block. He would go to paint on the blank canvas, but simply couldn't do it. He could see the endless possibilities there in front of him, and he was almost scared to put anything on the canvas.

Today I have more empathy for him than I ever had before. Here I am sitting in front of Gvim. Currently I have one line of code, and this is merely the file identifier. Before me lies an infinite number of coding possibilities, but the second I start writing some code I will be reducing those possibilities down. I want to get it right. I want to get it absoloutely right so much that I am almost scared to write anything. This is the most important piece of code I have ever written, and the first time I've ever had a block.

What makes it even sillier is that I know that once I get the first few lines down it's all going to flow, but I've been looking at the window on and off for the last few hours and I still haven't got any further.

I think I'll go get a snack and a drink and then stare at it some more and wait for my thoughts to gather.