Getting High

I guess it’s a generational thing. I like to get high. I am always on the lookout for anything that takes me out of ordinary reality, ordinary time.

Today, I did a lot of deliberately heavy breathing, which in yoga-speak is called pranyama. I forced air into and out of my nose at a blistering pace for over 2 minutes.

Then I exhaled every scrap of air from my lungs in a big vomit of breath, and held that air out until I thought I was going to pass out.

At the precise moment I thought I would faint, I sucked in a death-denying gulp of breath just in time. I held it inside my lungs until the point of near explosion.

Then I let go.

I floated free of time for the next 20 minutes.

Scary roller-coasters have the same effect on me: I get off and don’t know where I am in space or time.

I can also get sucked down the intellectual rabbit hole through reading and constructing complicated word-things.

I love these “high” states. I love feeling free and unshackled from time.  And it is such a relief to be done with  my complicated little personality and its neurotic quirks for awhile.

So what does this have to do with the Project-Driven Life?

I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

But soon you’ll be ready to come up with your first Project.

You’re ready now, actually. If you’ve done all the exercises, and have tended a streak for a month or longer,  you now have a pretty good idea who you are, what you stand for, and what you like to do.

From your streak, you’ve proven to yourself that you have the chops to persist, even when the thing that was so sparkly to begin with, is now stale.

The best moments of our lives always come when we’re  pushed to our limits.

The best moments of our lives come when we’re high; when we’re in that state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls Flow.

Tomorrow I’ll explain more about how to select a good Project, one that has a chance to produce Flow for you, to get you high.