John P - just my feeling exactly. There's nothing like a day spent in just playing the stuff you want to play or need to play. I play a piece over and over again - perhaps a hundred times or more in a day - just stopping for an essential pee now and then (as I get older...). Being "in the zone" is just what it feels like, and I'm just glad I'm not alone in feeling slightly obsessed with it!

Just this morning, after years of never getting round to it, I decide I'd learn to play that wonderful Irish tune "The Blackbird" on mandolin. The B part's a bit of a bugger, but I put the music in front of me (with the tune in my head from 1,000 listenings over the years) and set to. I've been playing it all day with a guitar interlude playing some Woody Mann stuff - just to get the fingers doing something else - and it's coming up to speed. Too soon to play it in a session yet, or as a solo piece, but some more days of playing it from morning til night will get me there...

I can go for days without playing (I also collect and tinker with watches) - but even then I'm thinking of stuff to play or looking at sheet music or listening, or planning a video. If I wake in the night, some tune or other comes instantly to mind.

And I've been like this for 50 years. There's obviously no hope for me!