I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Friday Flash, I share an epiphany or aha moment from the past week.
One of the most lovely things about this project is the feeling of time it gives me. I have so much time! I’m only at day 340 of 1000! I have 660 days left! Almost two-thirds of the entire project!
How will I feel when I hit day 501, and I have less than 50% left? or worse, day 751, when I will be over three-fourths of the way finished?
Where will I be on day 998 or day 999? Will I feel like a new woman? Reinvented? Transformed? Or will I feel like, “darnit I didn’t really get anywhere yet”?
It doesn’t have to end
I might live to be 90 years old. I’m 58 right now. I’ll turn 90 years old — if I’m still alive — on April 26th, 2058. That day is 11,669 days away.
Perhaps if I finish the 1,000 day project without a resolution (or even with one) I’ll start the next one: the 11,000 day project. I’ll finish this project on March 5th, 2026. And then 11,000 days after that is April 17th, 2058, right before my 90th birthday.
Why am I doing this math?
Blogging within lengthier and lengthier “projects” makes it easier for me to take the long view, to get myself out of daily ups and downs and into a broader conception of what might be. Personal transformation doesn’t play out in months or in one or two years. In my experience, it takes multiple years, even more than a decade sometimes.
That I may have thirty or more years left in my life, more than half of the time I’ve already been here, gives me a feeling of awe and wonder.
There’s no hurry.