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 0206


Sultry and languid day in the country. Started listening to the audiobook of Lolita, surprised to be enjoying it so thoroughly. All of the grit, perversion, sex that was lacking in Dickens, and then some.

Day 0205


Challenging day of unmet business hopes. Always allow my expectations to run away from reality. Don't know how to make the money I need.

Hot high-summer day. Sweetpeas, buddleia, harvest.

Day 0204


Sunny day in Suffolk. Woke up early and frittered the day away. Enjoyed finishing David Copperfield, but too neat, dramatic, moralising for tastes. Touched and moved nonetheless.

Couldn't sleep last night, and looking at the full moon from my window made me think once again about how everything we see is a construct: we see what we expect to see and take these as reality. We could accidentally have evolved to see in infrared, and that would be our whole reality, the appearance of things in the visible spectrum lost and alien to us, unrecognisable. Even the closest things to us, the most important things, we know so incompletely, inaccurately. In a slightly different light, everything is unrecognisable.

Keep replaying the lines about the 'first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart'.

Day 0203


Attended a graduation ceremony at Cambridge, can't believe that an institution founded on reason, rationality and rigour centralizes such an arcane, incomprehensible, thoughtless ritual. It's the same story as the wedding and the funeral: extremely strange, alien markers of life that we must uncritically submit to.

Day 0202


Went up the country back to Cambridge, with a pitstop in London. Emotionally exhausted after a week with mum.

Day 0201


Re-roofed the shed; felt good to be busy with hands and mind. Escapism of half-formed travel plans.

Day 0200


Two-hundred days ago I was here, in my bedroom at my Grandma's, drawing a copy of Leonardo's self portrait. Since I started this project, my Grandma has died, I have travelled around a lot, and I have avoided a lot of adult responsibilities. I haven't come any closer to any of the markers of middle-class adulthood that all of my friends are reaching; I have no house, car, girlfriend, career. I still have an overburdening sense of unease, dissatisfaction and lack of direction. I'm feeling left behind, and I'm feeling I'm missing out on a normal life by wilfully being itinerant and impulsive. I'm thirsty for external validation of some sort.

In the next 800 days:

  • I will grow my business or get a job and earn enough money to be able to buy an apartment in the UK
  • I will work on a portrait for the BP Portrait Award. I want to get my work exhibited
  • I will start to write
  • I will try to be more grateful
    •

    Day 0199


    Worked on the drawing during the day and listened to more David Copperfield, which made me well up. Listened to The Doors on repeat, needed music today.

    Day 0198


    Inferiority complex. Acute awareness that I'm underachieving. Need to get a proper job, settle down and be grateful for what I've got. Constantly comparing and finding myself lacking.

    Day 0197


    Took the socially expedient step of watching Wimbledon and the football. Attempting to be normal. Came close to not bothering to draw but managed a desultory forty minutes.
    Subscribe to