1000 days project

"We are what we repeatedly do"

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926)

The 1000 day project is my attempt to steer myself consciously towards the things that are most important to me.

Every day for 1000 days I will work towards my goals in a structured way. I will be posting daily updates on this website.

The 1000 day project runs from 26th December 2015 to the 21st September 2018, which is my 30th birthday.

In the past I have successfully completed two 100 day projects (100 portraits in 2010 and 100 blogs in 2011). In 2012 I spent 1000 hours drawing and painting.

Day 0366


Exhausted from family tension. Did scarcely an hour of work. Paris tomorrow to escape.

Day 0365


A year! Endured another Christmas. Lovely food, exhausting family, strange misdirection of efforts and attention to achieve something (peace and goodwill) that would quite happily come on its own accord, with much less faff.

Need to change the terms of this project to get more out of it. I will do 25 hours of painting a week. The goal is to get good at painting.

The correct goal is to try to increase happiness, both my own and those around me. I understand that broadly this means pursuing good family relationships, strengthening friendships, focusing on the present, being grateful and leading a purposeful life. My purpose is my art. I will tackle the other things in a less systematic way, though I may in fact need a routine for soft skills as well. Here's to the next 365 days.

Day 0364


Suffolk to Hampshire on wonderfully quiet trains. Same old house, different elderly relative temporarily installed.

Day 0363


Did four hours of painting and realised how counter-productive my daily routine has been. Leaving art to the last thing in the day and only doing an hour so a day has been a lazy, non-serious and non-committal attitude. Next year I am going to significantly increase my output. I have so much to learn and have only just started to paint. Despite self-identifying as an artist I still have no finished work. I have an artist's temperament and that is all.

Started listening to Dostoyefsky again, which is a tonic.

Skyped my ex and saw how miserably alone and cut off from humanity I am. Resolved to go to my mum's tomorrow for Christmas, against my better judgement and reversing the position I have spent weeks fortifying.

Need also to stop being so desperately earnest and in fact get over myself. But I feel like I'm hanging by a thread to normality and don't know how to effectively reentenangle myself. Oblitetation through alcohol was the method of choice for me a couple of years ago. Need to crush the misanthrope within but haven't the energy.

Day 0362


I am not so blind as to fail to see that I've got it pretty good at the moment. Living rent-free at home, all my clients away for their holidays and so no demands on my time. Enjoying reading my philosophy books, twiddling around researching code, mucking around with vector graphics, hanging out with my sister and painting.

I don't know whether it is due to my high caffeine intake, sleep deprivation or because my customary background existential anxiety is muted at present, but my head has been boundlessly clear and open all day and yesterday too. It's unusual! It is a shame there is nothing in it, I feel like I have mental energy and appetite but nothing serious or productive to work on. A great bottomless limpid pool, empty but surging with current and undercurrent and ripple and wave. There is no discernible cause to all this swirling, eddying turbulence.

Enjoyed Simon Blackburn's little book on ethics, Being Good, although the arguments against relativism, nihilism, determinism didn't wholly satisfy.

Day 0361


Spent a lot of time researching and planning an app for setting and achieving goals.

Went for a walk with Jess in the mid-winter drizzle.

Finished Schrödinger's little book, which was agreeably wide-ranging, grounded, challenging. Interesting that Buddhism crops up again.

Day 0360


Walk with Jess. Fieldfares, mist, unwanted road-users. Idled away the rest of the day doing meta-work on totally unfruitful, dead-end stuff.

Listened to the new Alan Partridge audiobook, which was delightful in places.

Day 0359


Jolly tired today, having fallen out of sync with normal waking hours. Booked a week in Paris over the new year, where I'll be hopefully painting my friend's portrait from life, and making the most of my Louvre membership.

Day 0358


I have slipped, finally, into what feels like a positive regime. Such blissful repose, how long can it be sustained?! Like a Dutch still life painting, everything is poised between perfection and the decline to rottenness.

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;William Shakespeare - As You Like It

But for now my anxieties and fears are overpowered by routine. An hour of quiet walking in the mist, winter wheat growing, hedges trimmed and puddles muddied. Time with family, time working, more time painting and listening to Wodehouse. Want to get into the habit of treating my artwork seriously.

Day 0357


Very happy in my little dreamworld here. Felt clear-minded, deliriously happy, capable today. Reading Schrödinger's What Is Life, and loved getting back in touch with empirical reality. Ordered more books on the limits of knowledge.

Went for a misty walk with Jess, cooked Patatas bravas.

Considering getting my act together and doing full days of painting. This piecemeal approach is lazy and has resulted in some excruciatingly bad work. I want to do some finished pieces next year. Then at least I can self-identify as an artist.
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