A year of new experiences for Dan

SOUTH-East Clare man Dan Mooney was getting stuck in his old ways, at 26, so he decided to embark upon on a journey of self discovery to complete 366 new things by his next birthday.
His endeavour has not only generated interest among his friends and family but has captivated a national audience and a large online following.
The project began on the Parteen man’s 26th birthday on April 14 and has snowballed in the space of a few months, with national radio stations following his progress and friends and followers across the nation and further afield tracking the project online.
Dan has so far completed 121 new things and he tells The Clare Champion the two most basic rules for the project. “It has to be something I’ve never done before and it is something that I can do in a day.”
Although the idea is not to challenge himself to daring and impossible feats, he has completed some activities that have taken him to task, including flying a plane, running a marathon, attempting to sit on every seat in Thomond Park and this month, he will swim Kilkee Bay.
He has also included much simpler tasks among his new experiences, such as not speaking for a day, walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, getting a piercing, visiting Newgrange and having his fortune told.
“I wanted to do it as a New Year’s resolution first in 2009 and I started writing up a list of things I wanted to do but I didn’t have enough time to gather a list so I just forgot about it. So coming up to New Year 2010 I thought it was a good idea to start it up. I hadn’t travelled. I hadn’t done anything really, so I said it’s time to start achieving something.
“My friends went travelling and that’s an amazing experience because you’re learning about yourself and you’re learning about a different culture but I’m not going to go travelling because of my job. I work shift work and uncomfortable hours in Shannon and I find myself a lot of the time using the shift work as an excuse to become very lazy and you can’t go on like that.
“I’m going to be working shift work for the next 40 years and I felt I can’t blame shift work for not doing anything with my life. It’s a bad way to be living and I was getting stuck in that rut.
“So I had to find a different way of doing and learning something about myself so this was what I could do. I also love writing. I’ve a degree in literature, so I said I’d write about it and that’s where the blog comes in and it has snowballed from there,” Dan explains.
He decided to begin the project on his 26th birthday, giving himself four and a half months to get together a full list. He made a good start but is still taking suggestions for additions.
“It’s a weird thing about people, when they heard about this they liked the idea and got on board but when they saw some of the stuff that I was putting on the list, they took that to mean that literally I would do anything. One of my mates keeps offering me a bottle of mustard and a spoon. I just keep saying I’m not going to eat a jar of mustard, there’s no experience in it.
“For most of what’s on the list, there is a reasonable explanation for why I would do it. Some of them are ridiculous but there is logic to it all. It has to be something that I’ve never done before and the whole point of it is that I’m getting a new experience every day.
“Since explaining it to people, the word naked has been the most over used word. People keep saying, do this naked, do that naked. People are having a laugh with it and suggesting things simply because they’re funny. But that’s not what’s it’s about.
“It’s about getting out of my comfort zone because at the end of the day, if I’m not challenging myself in some way, then I’m spending my life sitting on a couch instead of doing something with it,” he outlines.
While the idea of doing a new thing every day was one aspect of the project, the other aspect is documenting each day’s events. To do this, Dan has photos and a blog about his new experiences at http://theproject366things.blogspot.com.
With items on the list such as eat rabbit meat, swallow a raw egg, eat sushi and try fire breathing, Dan admits the biggest thing he’s learned so far is that he’s got a very weak stomach.
“The amount of stuff that I’ve done that’s made me want to throw up is ridiculous. I wanted to throw up after the marathon. I wanted to throw up when I had the brown sauce in the tea, a la the movie Intermission and when I ate the raw egg and sushi. The other thing it has taught me is that it’s an awful lot easier to get up off your ass and get something done than you think it is. What’s not so easy is taking the time every day to blog,” he reveals.
Selecting what can be done each day is not so much done by random selection, so much as what can be fitted in around his job.
Among the most exhilarating experiences that Dan has had to date with the project are flying a plane, jumping off Ardnacrusha Bridge and running a marathon.
Growing up in Parteen, Dan recalls swimming in the Ardnacrusha canal and watching the older kids jumping off the bridge but it was something he never had the nerve to do.
“I always wanted to do it. But when I was small and I got up to do it and looked over the edge I bottled out of it completely. When I went up there a few weeks ago, I looked out and it really is a massive drop. I was looking at it and I was thinking I really, really don’t want to do this.
“I was talking to a 16-year-old sitting up on the bridge, who said ‘I’ve done it twice already’. So I thought, if this 16-year-old kid can do it, then there’s no way I can back down. As soon as I had done it, I went back for a second one, it was amazing. It was such a rush.
“The flying was the same. I was blown away by the whole experience having control of it and the light touch that’s needed. The view, the sights were just incredible. We went out from Shannon over Kilkee, Lahinch and the Cliffs of Moher and back to Shannon in a Cessna 172. It was spectacular.
“The marathon as part of the Great Limerick Run was also one of the best things I’d ever done. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It was gruelling and I hit the wall with 7km to go. I walked the last 7km and I wanted to stop so much but I couldn’t.
“When I was finished, the buzz of getting across the line was such a rush. It’s no wonder people get addicted to fitness. I would certainly not have done the marathon if it wasn’t for the project. The next thing like that now is to swim the bay in Kilkee,” he reveals.
While he admits there was an experience in every new thing he has done, sometimes the experience is not what he expects. Dan set out recently to sit on every seat in Thomond Park. He thought this was going to be an achievable task in a day but some stumbling blocks he hadn’t counted on, including muscular pains and time constraints, cost him the ultimate goal.
“There are 15,144 seats in Thomond Park. I managed just over 12,000 and then time ran out. Injuries I was expecting included quads, groin, calves, hamstring and back but what I wasn’t expecting were blisters on my palms, friction burns on my arm, pains in my knees, aches in my neck, shoulders and arms. It was entirely as difficult as the marathon.
“The East and West stand number about 7,500 seats each, with a little more on the West Stand. Each stand divides into 10 sections, with the largest in the centre. The East Stand with the accompanying hospitality seats took five hours, so it’s a bigger task than you think.
“At a second per seat, it is 15,144 seconds or 4.2 hours. That sounds achievable right? Not even. It’s pointless trying to. You’re talking about pushing down the back of the seat next to you, kicking your feet under you and pushing your own weight across in one second.
“That wasn’t a problem for the first 1,600 seats or so. After that it slows down. So even pushing for two seconds per seat is 8.4 hours. Add 10 five-minute breaks and a half an hour for lunch and you’re looking at 10 hours.
“By the time I moved to the West Stand, I couldn’t keep pushing myself along and I was running out of time, so I was doubling up on the seats. One ass cheek per seat. If I’d thought of that in the first stand, we might have got it done, but it didn’t offer any improvement time-wise and was more painful.
“I don’t like failing. I don’t enjoy going home without completing my mission,” he said. However, Dan is determined to complete the rest before his birthday.
While the project will continue until next April 14, Dan was a little apprehensive about what future suggestions awaited him and so he came to Ennis last weekend where he had his fortune told. So what does the future hold?
“I’ve got an ancient soul. No wonder everyone says I’m a cranky man, old before my time. And I need to slow down. One thing that was right on the money was that I’m way too busy in my life. The whole thing was thoroughly laid-back and easy-going, but I am still a little sceptical,” he concludes.