2025 “Brushstrokes Beyond Limits” Project: The Motivation Behind Making 365 Paintings
Is it pleasure or pain? I can’t tell and don’t care.
Backpacking and climbing in Big Pine, CA —
Hard things are worth doing.
My living room is a garden of cardboard, canvases, stirring sticks, and empty condiment containers now filled with rainbows of paint. It is 8pm on January 20, 2025. I just finished my 20th painting of the year.
It is a 36”x36” acrylic painting of Mammoth Lakes, California. I spent the last summer there, running laps around the lakes. I had been experiencing my first overuse injury in my budding ultra-endurance career that bubbled up to the surface after running a self-supported 50K through Tahoe’s Carson Pass to celebrate my 27th birthday. For the last half of 2024, I had this tight pain in my left calf that plagued my adventures. But I couldn’t stop running. I loved it too much.
“Mammoth Days”
36” x 36”, Acrylic on Canvas, #20/365.
Entering 2025, I was riding the high of several 40-day “streaks”. In October, my best friend Harlie had begun training me to strengthen my rock-climbing skills, and she suggested we do this 30-day Men’s Health Daily Ab Challenge together. When we completed the challenge, I was hooked on the idea of nonnegotiable daily actions. I was hooked on self-discipline.
I set out to build more streaks in sectors of my life in which I wanted to see growth. These were the metrics I chose to track daily in the notes in my phone:
(1) complete a run, core, and pull-up workout
(2) pray for another person
(3) give a thing for free to another person
(4) receive income in exchange for value given to society
(5) reply to 75% of emails and texts.
I loved the playful game of streak-building combined with the positive changes in my life brought by daily action. I learned I could push through the resistance to give up on the hard days because I didn’t want to lose my streak. I hate texting. I did it anyway.
On January 1st, I had the idea occur to me to take on a daily painting streak. I was minorly intrigued by the idea. Then I wondered if I could do it for a whole year. That lit me up. I barely gave it a second’s thought. I accepted the challenge bestowed upon me from the ether that doles out ideas.
Painting a commissioned project: five different Oahu scenes on five cigar boxes, each for one of five friends who traveled to Hawaii together to celebrate a vow renewal.
My later reflections on the merits of this project revealed that it was indeed a great idea.
I will be practicing focus, perseverance, creativity, courage, hard work, and consistency every day at a level I probably can’t imagine right now.
I will have to cut out vices from my life in order to pull this off: sleeping in, scrolling on social media, eating too much food, and indulgent journaling. I will find ways to organize and streamline systems to reduce energy and time saps.
I will be producing and sharing a massive amount of artwork, which will inevitably increase my earnings (give more, receive more). I’ll get to travel to Peru to collaborate with the people defending the Amazon Rainforest from logging, write a book about my journey from seed to tree, and treat my friends, family, and colleagues with random gifts of love. Earning money, saving money, and spending money — none of it is evil.
I will have a unique project I am excited to share openly and bring others into – an expansion-causing stimulus with which I can positively impact the world.
Most importantly, I will be spending each day in 2025 doing what brings me more joy than anything else.
At Donner Summit for a day of rock climbing and “en plein air” (painting a scene “live”). I will be organizing several en plein air meet-ups this year throughout the U.S., in California, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, and Arizona.
It’s a simple realization. We can live our best life each day, or we can not. It is our choices that determines that. We are the designers of every hour, every day, every week, every month.
I have designed this project to bring out the best in me, support my visions for the future, and make me happy each day. Happiness is not a selfish pursuit when you realize how much better you treat your family, friends, and strangers when you are happy instead of pissed off because you hate your life and your choices.
My daily training loop — sun or snow, I hit the trail. In 2024 I asked myself, “What do elite runners do that I’m not doing?” One answer: they run, a lot, every day. It sounded like something I could try.
Now, I stride forward into my unknown. To fun. To sweat and tears. To spreadsheets and focused hours grinding out work. To figuring out how I will create a painting on the day I run my first 100 mile race, the Bighorn 100 in Wyoming, on June 20th.
The Mile 52 turn-around aid station, “JAWS”, at 8951ft, freezing and hungry under the stars, sounds like a good bet.
This is my gift back to the Creator for creating me. My life will be lived, and it will inspire others to do the same.
“365 Stories in Paint” are a lot of stories. If you have an experience, goal, or idea that inspires, expands, and uplifts others to dream big and #GoForIt, share it with me so I can paint it and spread the empowerment.
The Eagle Buttress Traverse in South Lake Tahoe. Making great art comes naturally when you spend time in such inspiring places.
I look forward to connecting with you. Until then, may you make this day a great one.
Thank you for sharing you with the world.
Blair
