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 0406

Willpower eroded by taste of metropolitan freedom, time slipped through my weak fingers and a day lost to nothingness.

Heard about the Albany, the Mayfair apartment complex that is and has been an asylum for my kind:

..the haunt of bachelors, or of married men who try to lead bachelors' lives – the dread of suspicious wives, the retreat of superannuated fops, the hospital for incurable oddities, a cluster of solitudes for social hermits, the home of homeless gentlemen … the place for the fashionable thrifty, the luxurious lonely and the modish morose.
Marmion Wilard Savage - The Bachelor of the Albany

Day 0405

Day off. I have turned my art into mere social currency; crassly to be shown to people at parties, something to be bragged about as I used to do about traveling. Devalued it and me.

Day 0404


Worked hard, feet hurt from standing at the easel all day.

Day 0403


Phone conversation with mum in which I imperiously proffered solutions to all of our problems. Debrief with dad then the rest of the day lost in directionless procrastination. Falling behind my art target. Too much brain cross-chatter to focus. Have switched off Ayn Rand at least. Feel I should write a book, 'Being shit and aware of it, a complete guide'.

Day 0402


Worked on unprofitable scraps most of the day. Started another portrait of my sister whilst I wait for the underpainting of the other one to dry. Really like drawing in charcoal.

Day 0401


Colour painting, challenging. Standing up all day, tiring. Looked up exhibitions to enter, prizes to win. Have a clear view of the penury following my desire to paint will lead to. If I do continue and do get portrait clients, they will repulse me.

Look at Sargent's work for inspiration.

Day 0400


Six hundred days of being in my twenties left.

Published the start of a manifesto outlining to myself what I believe to be true and how these beliefs should affect my life.

Struggling with my sleep schedule, yearning for a girl to fall madly in love with me, frozen waiting to get some decently paid work.

Sick to death of Ayn Rand but can't compel myself to abandon the book before finishing it. Every character is identical, they all share precisely the same unsophisticated idiolect, and everything is completely binary. There are no children, no functioning families, no jokes and no variation in tone. It is a constant, heavy thudding of monomania. Premises are unchecked, the reader is not for one moment considered. I'm not used to reading badly written books and it is getting me down! Still, the darkness makes the light ever more welcome.

Switched to charcoal to work on the underdrawing.

Day 0399


Horrible yet again to be confronted with my inability to draw! Immutable refusal to learn and to improve! Had to discard brushes and work with an oil pastel. Took three hours to get anywhere near a drawing resembling a human female, and it sure as hell isn't looking like the model. Torture to look at an art book and see Sargent's mastery. I have missed the boat, and I think I never had a place onboard in the first place.

Day 0398


Six hours of futile attempts to start the drawing of a new portrait with the brush. I just can't do it.

Day 0397


Anticlimactic day -- barely bothered to do an hour of painting, having intended to work all day to get the portrait in a less embarrassing state for submission to the BP Portrait Award; more of a statement of intent than anything, a gesture to myself that I mean to try to be good. But I couldn't muster the motivation to work on it, and gave up and submitted it anyway. Horrid to look back at some of the previous photos of it and to see that I have in fact made it worse over time.

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