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 0246


Jess kindly posed for me. Cambridge for dinner. Summer rain.

Day 0245


Jess fell asleep on the sofa and I managed to get model for twenty minutes.

Fields ploughed, air heavy with blackberry and cider apple smells. Dry grass, golden straw.

Day 0244


Woke up and worked hard all day. Ruined my mood by getting worked up by problems which are definitely mainly my fault but I don't want to face up to them. Very quick to anger, very quick to be the victim, when in fact I've created the preconditions for the problem through my own inaction or avoidance of the issue.

Listening to Montaigne, which is very much like Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Agreeable, sensible, poised and practical.

Day 0243


London, Surrey, Suffolk. Work and commuting. Learned to say no in business, which is something I should have been doing all along.

Day 0242


Busy, productive, not on art.

Day 0241


Budapest to London to Suffolk. Beautiful clear day, lovely flight. Danube meandering across countries, silky smooth channel, turbid with silt, hedges and brown fields of our little island. Lots of work to catch up on tomorrow.

Day 0240


Rainy day in Budapest, confined to eateries and the apartment. Finished A Sentimental Education. Deeply enjoyed it. Deification of the adored object, casual, complete disregard for other loves which are either distractions or echoes of the real thing. The fatal attraction of the unattainable. Implicit assumption of the necessity of mistresses. Collateral of the incidental loves destroyed by the self-obsessed young man. I want more, I love seeing my own despicable nature reflected back at me.

Day 0239


Big day of walking, exploring both Buda and Pest. Indulgent eating. Enjoying the love intrigues in A Sentimental Education and can't stop thinking about them.

Desultory midnight scrawl. Mind and efforts very much elsewhere.

Day 0238


Fireworks over the danube. Lots of waiting. Standardization of experience. Malls in one country identical to malls in another. One city the same as another, with the same homeless, the same consumers and the same tourists.

Day 0237


Vienna to Budapest by train. Endless breakfasts, lunches, dinners, walking, comparisons, cushion of globalisation.
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