He spends two hours a day writing numbers on yellow legal pads, which are quickly stacking up since he started in February 2004. Wilson’s goal is to write every number from one to 1 million.

“I wanted to leave my mark in history,” he said, resting his hands on the binders protecting his ongoing project.

He has almost made it to 600,000. He’s doing it, Wilson said, because he’s always been fascinated by the concept of a million.

He hopes accomplishing the goal will earn him a Guinness World Record. An Australian man typed the numbers, which took him 16 years, but as far as Wilson knows, no one has written the numbers by hand.

And no one quite understands what Wilson is doing.

“They think I’m, like, doing it in my head,” the self-employed auto detailer said. “It’s kind of off the wall.”

His wife, though, is supportive, as are his two sons in Seattle, who encouraged their father when he told them what he was doing.

“In a big way, I’m doing this for them, too,” he said. “I want them to be able to say, ‘Well, Dad did something.’ “

The numbers are written on three-quarter inch rectangles on sheets of notebook paper, with thick black lines separating each column. Each sheet is in a protective covering; Wilson said in a year or so when he has finished, he wants to sell the numerical accumulation to a collector.

Those three-quarter rectangles, if lined up now, would stretch for more than 5 miles, he said, just another aspect of 1 million about which he marvels. Putting all of the sheets of paper next to each would add up to 1,400 square feet.

“It’s a long number,” he said.

The sheer size of the task makes mistakes common; Wilson said writing the wrong number or skipping a number happens frequently.

“If I’ve done several hundred and realize I made a mistake, I’ll start a fresh page,” he said. “But if I’ve done less than 50, I’ll just cross it out.”

Wilson’s numbers are for sale; people can buy a special number, and they get a certificate signed by “Mr. Million” himself. So far he has sold about 100 numbers, mostly birthdays, anniversaries or other special numbers. Some, however, picked their numbers oddly; one man picked 777,777 because sevens are lucky.

“They want to own a little piece of history,” he said.

Once he’s finished and an official record holder, he plans to take the money he’s made from his million-number venture and work on some of his other goals, such as inventing a product, patenting it and marketing it, and getting into politics. When he hits that magic seven-digit number, though, he’s done.

“Anybody’s welcome to try for two, because I’m stopping at one,” he said.

Heidi Toth can be reached at 344-2543 or htoth@heraldextra.com.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.