This covers day 15 of 30 for the Hypnotherapy Project, which I'm collaborating on with Los Angeles-based hypnotherapist Greg Beckett. You can read more about this experiment, what motivated it and what we hope to accomplish here.

Do you schedule yourself ruthlessly? Or are you a chronic meanderer?

I have always seen it as a binary decision, with scheduling firmly on the side of right. But when my system finally broke down back in 2002, the Crohn's onset flipped my well-ordered life over on its ear, I began to see the value in rest, play and meandering.

Part of what we're doing with this project is playing. We had no set plan other than a commitment to have me go under for 30 days in a row. Some people, the old me, for instance, might find that a colossally silly waste of time.

The new me was excited at the prospect overall. I loved the idea of not-knowing, of trusting that I had done enough work up to this point to let go.

But the old me, which I think I've amply proved is still very much always with me, sometimes freaks out at the idea of no-plan, especially on a day-to-day basis. The biggest anxiety I've experienced during the Hypnotherapy Project is not "will I be made a fool?" or "will I do some irretrievable damage by mucking around with my insides?" but "sweet baby Jesus...what are we going to talk about today?!"

On Friday, we talked about...all kinds of stuff. What was going on in my life, what was going on in Greg's. We're friends, and that's what friends do. Could we be working more efficiently? Maybe.

Or maybe not. Maybe you need the room and air around an idea to get it to bubble up.

Bubble up it did. After about an hour of yakking, we hit on having me envision the weekend's workflow going smoothly. It's what I needed. I've got a lot more work to do these days than time to do it in.

And the weekend? It flowed very smoothly, just as we saw it doing. Work that felt like play, freer from worry.

There was even a little discretionary time for meandering...

xxx c

Image by casch52 via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.