The plan (1/2)
This post lays out the full roadmap for the creative side of Project Ghost, from start to finish. The next one will cover my personal life journey, which will run parallel to the photography and, if everything goes according to plan, will last the rest of my days.
The adventure itself hasn’t started yet (I’ll get into the exact dates in the next post), but these preparatory months are perfect for making sure everything that comes later is technically flawless.
Let’s fast-forward to the moment I leave this place for good, walk away from everyone who’s been part of my life until then, and the ghosting process actually begins.
Project Ghost will unfold along several artistic tracks:
First, this blog will serve as the logbook. I’ll keep posting whatever I learn along the way and share photos I simply like—no stricter filter than that. I figure some of this might be useful to anyone who’s ever considered doing something similar with their own life. But the site also has a built-in “kill switch” that I’ll explain in a minute.
Second, the photo books. There will be two separate lines: a periodic one featuring chosen images from each distinct time period that naturally belong together (each photo in every book will work like a single episode within a season of a TV series, and the entire Ghost project will be the full show); and a completely independent line, a few “special” books. I can’t say more about those in advance, because figuring out some of their details on your own will be part of the experience of holding them for the first time.
And finally, the photographic prints. I’ve found a service with top-tier quality that ships worldwide, and I’ll spend this entire prep year running every possible test so that every single image I choose for the physical collection is absolutely perfect. If I’m pouring the rest of my life into this, every detail has to be worth it.
So how does Project Ghost actually end? That’s the best part. There are only two possible endings: success or failure.
If I fail, I’ll just keep going until I die. One day the posts will stop coming, no new products will appear, and anyone who’s been following along will know it’s over. That’s the default ending if nothing extraordinary happens. It will mean my final life adventure didn’t work out. And that’s fine—failure is part of life, part of projects, part of art. If it ends that way, so be it.
But is there any extraordinary mechanism that could flip the script and make it a success? Yes—and that’s where the kill switch on this blog comes in. Here are the current stats as I write this:
The moment either of these two things happens—my subscriber count hits zero, or a new post gets zero views in the entire week after it goes live (I think that’s a fair window)—everything stops instantly. I will never log back into Substack to check anything, no more posts, the book series freeze exactly where they are, no more prints available. No goodbyes, no explanations, nothing.
Whatever happens after that doesn’t matter. The day those conditions are met—the day I can reasonably conclude that nobody cares about this project anymore, that nobody remembers me—will be the happiest day of this final chapter of my life.
I will have succeeded. I’ll finally be a real ghost.
