Day 1000

A Milestone Met. A Future Still Unwritten

What's it about that number?

It depends on what you’re measuring.

A thousand seconds—less than 17 minutes. Not even enough time to watch a sitcom. Barely longer than a coffee break.

A thousand hours—about six weeks of work—a season of trying something new.

A thousand days? Just under three years. A blink in the scope of a life. An eternity in the span of a silence.

A thousand pennies—you can barely buy a sandwich.

A thousand one-hundred-dollar bills? It might just change a life.

A thousand miles can feel like a road trip with the right company, or an impassable distance when you’re trying to get home.

A thousand light years is so vast you can’t get your head around it. A thousand steps can start a journey. Or finish one.

This number, this simple, round, symmetrical number, isn’t defined by what it is, but by how we see it, what we attach to it, what it carries.

Because in the end, a thousand is just a marker.

It’s our perspective that gives it meaning. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Not just about what 1000 days is, but what it means, specifically to me, and maybe to you. That is the essence of my message.

We like round numbers. We mark them: 10 years married, 20 years in a job, 100 days in office, 1000 subscribers, and so on. We use them to pause and reflect, celebrate, mourn, and course-correct. They become emotional benchmarks in the story of our lives. These milestones are waypoints of our soul's journey, like a scout with a compass on an orienteering course. (Spoken like the Eagle Scout I am.)

I'm crossing one of those benchmarks this month: 1,000 days since I last heard from my daughters. It’s a sentence I never imagined writing. And yet—here I am doing just that.

Three years is a blink of an eye, nothing and everything at once.

In that time, I’ve watched friends send their kids off to college, and I've watched others bury theirs.

One of my friends lost his son to suicide.

My best friend almost died in a horrific racing accident, but thankfully is fully recovered.

I’ve seen pain and loss through this time, the kind of loss that splits your world in two—the before, and the after.

Seventy-eight days ago, the Palisades fire in California swept through my partner’s neighborhood. Her home was gone in under 15 minutes—less than 1000 seconds—reduced to ash before she even knew what was happening. As a single mom with two kids, a life built over decades is erased in less time than it takes to listen to a podcast.

Witnessing and living through that kind of loss teaches you something about time: how little of it we truly control, and how much of it we waste thinking we have more.

In contrast, 1000 days can feel like a glacier—slow, grinding, endless. A kind of emotional erosion. Not explosive. Just steady. Quiet. Like wind against rock.

But this piece isn’t about my loss. It’s about perspective. Teaching and learning from the lessons – My lessons. It’s about what happens when you stop and look at a number—any number—and ask yourself: What does this mean? And how do I want to carry it forward?

Looking back over these last 1000 days, I don’t see a perfect arc. I see fragments, lessons, moments of clarity, and messy middle chapters. But most of all, I see the choice that perspective gives us. These 1000 days sometimes feel like a death sentence, one that will never end, but other times are a beacon, a signal always coming back to a place where I will not give up hope.

I choose to have the 1000th day be a reminder that I’ve made it through so much. That I’ve endured. I’ve been lied to, lied about, and cheated on, and taken advantage of. Through it, I’ve held onto hope every day, even when it felt foolish because of the actions and words said. Hope is what I have, and it will never falter.

Here’s what I know now: 1000 days is not the end of a story. It’s just a place in the middle.

I haven’t spoken to my daughters since then, but I’ve talked about them daily. I still reflect on what I can do better, work on myself, and talk to my counselors, only hoping for a chance to share where I am.

I’ve written to them hundreds of times, without knowing if they've seen or read any of my over 10,000+ words, emails, letters, texts, or anything. I’ve prayed for them. I’ve remembered them with every fiber of who I am. Honor them every day. They may not hear me yet—but I’m still here, standing at the end of a road for them, whenever they choose to walk it, an eternal invitation and a hope for reconciliation.

I no longer see time as a countdown to the end of a life or a resolution to anything. I see it as an invitation. 1000 Days isn’t just what’s behind me. It’s also what’s ahead. Reframing the future based on the past, the pivot is now: “What could I build with 1,000 days starting now?”

What kind of man, father, partner, friend, colleague could I be with 1000 days of MORE intention, connection, continued work on myself, and just more grace? What if the next 1000 isn’t about what I’m waiting for… but what is created with that focus? What will the next 1000 days look like when I look back? And in my case, all I need is a chance to demonstrate.

There’s an old saying: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward.”

But maybe the value of 1000 days is in the space it creates—to stop, zoom out, and remember that the story, your story, isn’t finished yet. I can reflect on the work and progress, and use it as fuel to keep growing and moving forward.

If you’re marking a milestone of your own—maybe it’s been 1000 days since the job ended, since the diagnosis, since the goodbye, or the beginning—know this: you get to choose what Day 1001 looks like.

You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to keep going.

1000 is a marker. Days, weeks, whatever—it’s a number. It's up to you how you want to use it. Mine is not a marker of pain but of presence and opportunity.

Tomorrow is Day 1001.