Junkie

I am fast becoming a disciple of Flow. I believe I have referred to it elsewhere in these articles as "muscle memory". Now, having read up on facts due to a rogue podcast I stumbled on, I prefer this definition. It carries a sustained rather than an only reactive connotation which I feel matches the true experience. The facts I will spare you, not only because I am still digesting them and frankly they are not entirely in my possession yet, but mainly because it is a bad habit to develop a habit and then a theory to justify it. It happens with coffee and chocolate, say. First you drink/eat it, then you look up the unfailingly scientific article on why it's good for you.
There is one other reason: I know Flow, I'm sure it's there. Any explanation is no doubt of interest, but unnecessary.
Heaven forbid my yielding to the temptation of juxtaposing academia and real life. It is true however to say that most of the training we receive as language professionals is classroom-based, and whilst helpful and indeed essential, scholarly reflections are rarely the reason we like the job or why we choose to learn about it in the first place. 
If we are honest, the first spark - the one we constantly try to re-create - is that sudden projection of the nerves towards a pitch of reactivity; the rush of endorphin-powered availability of words in the brain; the highs and the lows displacement and dissociation creates; the steady anaesthetic descent into a realm where our bodies no longer hurt; the awareness of oneness with the machines enhancing us; time standing still as we impeccably link up a sequence of perfect choices...in short, we are slaves to Flow.
Maybe you give it another name. Or maybe you really actually do do it all differently, and I'm alone in my world. That's fine, really, I can cope, and I'll read about my mistakes on the other blogs. Now, back to mine.
And my reasons to share: first, I like to note how all my own apprentices over the years have been trying to acquire this trick of the trade more than others. Second, I see that light in my fellow wanderers, simply we don't talk about it because it's a language they don't teach us at school.
And why should it matter? Well, because this is our experience, and our life. And because we suffer chronically from providing a service without an experience (I generalise, but do we never ever learn from the CEOs we have to translate?), whereas we all need to transfer just that to those we care for professionally. I know the latter must be a good reason for someone to employ a communicator, rather than the sad reality that one is incompetent at languages. In a mature consumer society needs are wants.  My client's money can harness this energy, which is different to buying an automated software (yes, it will come about!). This is powerful.
To press the point further let me suggest a backchaining approach: what do we do all this for? Allow me to exclude the mirage of money and the triviality of travel from the conversation. Is it the noble goal of enabling communication? That of uniting the world by promoting cultural understanding? Or perhaps forwarding business deals and helping the economy? Yeah, me too - and I mean it! But that is the destination, not the fuel burning up inside of you as you fly.
Shall we try the other question then: what makes you bear it all?
Before this it seems to me that all the higher codified arguments fall out of focus, diseased as we are with the how and having obliterated the crucial why. This is where vision blurs.  
Which is fine, as now I want you to close your eyes and just let go...