I know the biggest question I had when starting this is who the hell I thought I was to think I could make a million dollars in a year, so I'm sure everyone else is wondering as well. This project has fascinated me from the first second because it seemed that my entire life has been leading up to this, that this wrestle with money is something that's always been present in my life.
I was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to a middle class family who lived in a middle class neighbourhood where no one ever did anything drastic. My mother is a retired teacher. My father is an incurable entrepreneur and visionary who's now gone back to teaching high school.
I managed to get a scholarship to a private school when I was fourteen. This was an eye opener - this was my first experience with rich people, the sons and daughters of the city's elite. Girls that had horses and boys that, at fourteen, were planning how they were going to waste four years of university and then take over the family business. Kids who got cars and trips to France for graduation.
Basically, it was like going to school on another planet.
The entire experience made me really bitter actually; the sense of entitlement that a lot of these kids had was something I'd never experienced, and I couldn't understand being so dreadfully unhappy when you've got a goddamn pony. After three years of that I'd had quite enough and managed to escape and go to a public highschool for the last two years with plebs like me.
I graduated high school and decided that university would have to wait (I was broke, completely) and got a job. Two, actually: one in a cafe and one working the graveyard shift in a late-night bookstore. There were 700 magazine titles in that place and I started reading a lot about all the cool stuff that was going on everywhere else in the world, everywhere I wasn't. Sometime in 1998 I made a rash decision (as these decisions always seem to be) and sold everything I owned and bought a one-way ticket to London, England with $500 CDN in my bank account.
And I have never been so miserable.
I worked in a few pubs, tried to enjoy being young and abroad but it was some of the darkest days of my life, mostly because I had absolutely nothing. London is an expensive city and I was making three pounds an hour. At one point I was working in a pub with two other people who were as broke as I was and we were eating whatever was left on the plates that came back to the kitchen.
I was amazed at that city: so many of the businessmen that came into the pub at the stroke of 11am to "get away from the office" seemed so unhappy with their lives and told stories about things like their dreadful trips to the south of France with great heaving sighs. Again, I wondered how anyone could be so goddamn unhappy when they get a few weeks on the French Riviera every year.
However, there I was in one of the world's great cities, broke but young and healthy and managing to keep a roof over my head if nothing else (and usually nothing else), and I couldn't be happy either.
Eventually I realized that what I really needed was an education at any cost, that I wasn't going anywhere working for three pounds an hour and eating table scraps. I started busking after work at night in Neal's Yard with a sign in my guitar case that said "Send me back where I came from". I paid the hundred pound plane fare home in pound coins.
I got home in May 1999, moved to Toronto and again rejected the sensible way of doing things and went to art school the following September. I had nothing, my family didn't have any money, and the Ontario Student Assistance Plan, set up for students in financial need, rejected my loan applications (they eventually lent me $4000 over four years). Tuition: $4500. Living expenses for a year: about $13,000. Supplies and fees: $5000.
Then the debt began. For the first couple of years I slid into debt but managed, working constantly during school. I painted houses, telemarketed, worked the dreaded sales auditing job, and eventually found myself working in a psychiatric hospital working in the ER and running the education program for medical students with a boss I called Chuckles because she was a tyrant and universally reviled. Chuckles was from an extremely rich family and clearly had no idea how much school cost and what you had to do if no one was paying tuition for you. The experience with Chuckles made me pretty bitter, although at the time I really tried to understand her and told myself that she simply had no idea what it was like to be twenty-one and doing your ethics homework under your desk at your full time job. Now I think she was just a bitch.
I worked at that hospital 30 hours a week and went to school with every other available shred of the day. Because I was a good little worker monkey I got more and more responsibility at work and I got by all right moneywise for that time, but I was completely, entirely, desperately miserable: exhausted, worn out, jaded, sad. In June 2002 I told them, quite literally, to take the job and shove it. That was one of the greatest days of my life. I tasted freedom.
Because I had been making a reasonable living at the hospital and was a student I had a bit of cash, credit cards and a line of credit that I decided to float on for awhile. I made efforts to get another job and while in an interview for a job at the Ministry of Education (haha!) I realized that I had to break this cycle, that I was going down the same road that lead me to nearly losing my mind working in a psychiatric hospital. So I didn't get another job.
Instead, I started thinking about starting a business and working saner hours at a gallery and concentrating on my undergrad thesis and sliding deeper into debt. In April 2003 I graduated with honours from the Sculpture and Installation program specializing in performance art. Total debt from those four years: $30,000, mostly on credit cards. (I'm kind of glossing over my artistic practice here. To see some of my work, go to the art section of this site.)
After graduating my alternatives were: a) go to grad school (which I had no money for), b) get a job (which I had already done during school and which I knew would leave me unfulfilled and miserable), or c) do something else. So I took door number three and started a business doing design and marketing.
I was prepared for the no money part. I was prepared to work hard, sacrifice, put everything into the opportunity to get paid to do something that I love. What I was not prepared for was the reality of doing all this already thirty grand in the hole. In a year and a half my debt had ballooned again to over $40k.
The business has been breaking even for over a year now, and is sometimes marginally profitable. It has given me the chance to work on some amazingly cool and satisfying projects (I work mostly in the independent music industry). What it hasn't been able to do is pay me enough to live *and* manage my debt, so since I started it I've usually had a night job to keep up with credit card payments. (I make between $800 and $1000 a month, and my monthly debt payments are about $750.)
I actually enjoy bartending so the jobs themselves weren't the problem. What I started to notice was that I was working myself to exhaustion for 15-30 hours a week and no matter how much I worked I always ended up broke. In September 2004 I finally quit my bar job and didn't get another in order to force myself out yet another vicious cycle, one where I work and work and work and never get any further ahead.
In December 2004 I was walking home under an overpass near my house in tears because it was getting cold out and this would be the third consecutive winter that I haven't been able to turn on the heat in my apartment. The sense of hopelessness and regret was overwhelming and I felt as if I had made every wrong choice there was to be made, was a failure at life, at money, at responsibility. I have fits of regret and doubt a few times a day, however, so that's not really anything new. However, this time, instead of doing what I usually do and wallowing in woe-is-me, I decided that I needed to do something drastic. Something like ... make a million dollars.
In the space of five seconds this entire plan fell elegantly and completely together. I could harness my love of documentary, performance, and business and make this hilarious and ridiculous plan happen. With a bit of planning and good PR, 2005 could be My Million Dollar Year.
Then the reality of what I was taking on set in. The catchphrase for December has been "Um, yikes."
YIKES to having to face money and how much it controls me. YIKES to having to think about my debt every day. YIKES to having to put vulnerable, screwed up life completely into the public eye for this project - which feels so right and important - to happen. This thing is already amazingly difficult and it doesn't start until tomorrow.
Lucky for me the idea of My Million Dollar Year was ridiculous and absurd enough to not get me too scared to start. Now that I'm less than 24 hours away from starting it the temptation to pull the plug on the whole thing is mighty tempting. However, I know that all I've wanted for the last few years was to know that it's not going to be like this forever. Now I have the opportunity to let an audience see my most vulnerable moments, how scared I am, how desperate my situation is, all the times I fail, that maybe show that even the youngest and deepest in debt can find a way to change their lives.
Here's to 2005.
December 31, 2004