"I'll show them what one screwball can do!" -- Marge Simpson
2005 is the year in which I make a million dollars.
My name is Astrid Bin. I'm 25, an artist and an entrepreneur, and I live in Toronto, Canada. I came out of university $30,000 CDN in debt, and since then that debt has grown to over $40,000. I get deeper into debt every month and for a long time I have not been able to find a way out.
I finally got desperate enough to change my life in December 2004. (You can read the long version of this story here). When faced with the third consecutive winter in an unheated apartment because I can't afford the electricity. Something in my head snapped and shifted. I decided that I needed to make a million dollars, and just for kicks, I'll do it in a year.
This website is part of the record of that process.
This website documents the entire process online and allows the viewer to interact with me, as well as participate in and contribute to this project. It's documented mainly through a blog that documents the daily struggles, ideas, challenges, triumphs and setbacks as they happen, as well as a video documentary that's going to be compiled into a feature-length documentary in 2006.
This project, above all things, is an experiment. It's an experiment in money, luck, time, chance, serendipity, the media, myself.
"Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Want to tell me what I'm missing? Tell me.