I've come to love how clean an empty folder can feel. No false starts to navigate. No clever phrases from days long past that you keep trying to shoehorn into places they'll never belong. No half-formed arguments that seemed brilliant at 2 am that turned to dust come daylight.
To me, now, starting over feels like pruning. Sometimes you have to cut back to the root to see what actually wants to grow. The old stuff wasn't bad... but it was in the way.