Feed Your Muse

Where does a story start? Does it start with a childhood spend drawing cartoons, keeping any number of animals, and spending weekends at the riding stables, between swimming and books and school? Does it start with college studying design, or university studying engineering? Or does it start when outsourcing left me out of a job, in a struggling economy and a job-scarce region, with a whole bunch of ideas I'd never had time for and a sudden influx of available time?