My Million Dollar Blog

Translation of title: Don’t let the bastards get you down.

And they say Latin is a dead language.

I’ve been reading a book lately. It’s called “Think and Grow Rich”, you might have heard of it. I came across a copy on Friday. I’ve been reading it this weekend.

Basically the book’s premise is this: Whatever you decide you truly desire, whatever you set your mind to with every fibre of conviction in your being, will be yours. I’ve suspected for a long time that the only thing separating me from what I want out of life - monetarily and otherwise - is the belief that I deserve it, have every right to it. With that belief I would give myself over to having it. I think the belief that I deserve what I want is the thing that’s missing.

Last night was interesting - someone I met on the street knew about the project and called me a “hero of our generation”, which was kind of interesting. I don’t think I’m a hero, but it’s good to know that people are into what I’m doing. I also ran into a friend of mine I haven’t seen in a few months, and he said “2004 sucked. 2005 is going to be great. What are you doing these days?” and I said, “I’m making a million bucks.” His mouth dropped open and he said, “Wait - that’s YOU?” Apparently some of his friends were at his place that night talking about this project. I jokingly said I hope they weren’t saying anything flattering. He said they weren’t. I’m just happy that people are talking about it.

It seems the mail I get seems to follow themes - lately it has been “You don’t really expect to make a million dollars, do you?”

Answer to that: Do you really think that I would embark on this project only to do it half-assed?

Wait, answering a question with a question isn’t really answering it at all. What I meant was, yes, I really do fully intend to make a million dollars this year, and I intended that from the very first day I decided to carry this out.

So you can stop asking.

I am starting a new strategy, to stoke my inner fire to an absolute white hot, to strengthen my resolve and make this million. These things involve:

a) Coming up with three unique ideas each day to make money.

b) Posting a sign beside my computer that records how much I plan to make, and when I plan to make it.

c) Posting another sign with all the things I could do with that money, and writing them there as they occur to me.

d) Posting yet another sign with all the reasons why I’m doing this, and updating that as needed.

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It was only -1C today so I took a walk down to the lake. It was almost sunset and everything was purple. The lake has been frozen but since it got warmer today the surface ice started cracking. As I was watching it I realized that if you stood really still and didn’t make any noise you could hear it creaking and snapping all over the place as it melted.

Sometimes I am reminded that the most beautiful experiences don’t require the spending of anything except time. All I had to pay to be reminded that the lake is alive was attention.

“I bargained with life for a penny,
And life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty score.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.”

I read that on the streetcar this morning and it hit me like a sack of doorknobs. I think I may have learned something.

I feel like I’m cracking the code that’s been eluding me for so long. I can commit to and work through anything, I know this. What I can’t do is have faith. Because I’m afraid to just have faith in a positive outcome of my ideas and my work, I spend time ruminating on all the things I *don’t* want.

What the hell is up with that.

My computer is on a milk crate in my living room because this is the only room that is a) warm, and b) free of raccoon stench. This means I am constantly hunched over it for hours at a stretch, and holy crap is my shoulder hurting these days. I think the two might be related.

Not to be discouraged by Ebay nuking my listings last week, everything has been RELISTED. It took me awhile to figure out what the hell to do with those listings; Ebay and I were not friends there for a bit, but when I found out that it was the URL in the listing that made them take them down I decided to give Ebay one more shot. Part of me feels like a sucker.

I’m feeling guilty about screening comments on this blog because I think it censors things and reduces interactivity. So let the record show that comments are unscreened until the spam gets too ridiculous.

Sometimes I am amazed that so many people read this blog. I am amazed that so many people email me and leave me comments and tell me to shut the hell up and get on with it and “stop cryin the Blues”, that it’s only January and I can’t give up now. Thanks for the suggestions about dealing with PayPal. Thanks to all of you. Thanks also to the sharp-eyed individual who catches more typos than anyone else.
I was a basketcase yesterday, completely, because my mum had a health test that came back with a red flag, and she was going in for more tests today. I walked around the city, went through the motions of productivity all day, sporadically bursting into tears and generally being a basketcase. Got taken out by benevolent friends, fed nachos and oceans of coffee and distracted with conversation and trash talk. Got home and talked to Etienne until the wee hours. Finally fell asleep despite myself at 3.30 this morning.

Good news at 11am: She’s totally fine, false positive, etc etc. The sense of relief is unbelievable.

Lesson learned: Don’t freak until you have something to freak about.

This event threw a lot of my feelings and beliefs into relief. Among a million other big things was the thought of my parents suddenly not being around which made me crazy because I want so badly for them to see that I can make something of myself. I want to be someone they can be proud of. The thought of that not happening because I made too many stupid mistakes and took too damn long was too much to bear. Guilt, regret, aughhh.

When I think of money, I don’t think of big houses and fast cars. I think of getting out of debt and starting again at zero. I think of my family and those around me who want to do so much and are so brilliant but the only thing standing between them and their dreams is money. I think of people I’ve never met that have so much more profound need than anyone I know. I think of all the good that can be done in the world with money.

I’m realizing that what I’m really getting at with this million dollars is asserting some sort of power. Debt makes me feel helpless, and that’s what makes me depressed. Money means the power to make things happen, to change the circumstances around you, to change the circumstances of others. It’s not the having of money. It’s the acquiring of the ability to affect change.

Eyes on the prize and all that.

So I added a bank account to my PayPal account last week so I could transfer the money that’s there.

Made the transfer.

The bank, for some reason that they wouldn’t tell me when I phoned them, refused it.

I was charged a $30 fee by PayPal.

My sense of defeat is really starting to loom behind me. The litany of bullshit that has been January hangs around like some dumbass checklist and I can’t strike anything off.

I’m coming to a loss. I’m disappointed in today; I lied awake this morning when I woke up on the living room floor and tried to will today into being excellent.

It wasn’t.

Dear 2005.

Please, please, please get better. Because I don’t know how much more kicking I can take.

Love,
Astrid.

Two blog posts in one day! Why? Because I love you. Yes, you.

I’m getting an awful lot of spam at the milliondollaryear.net addresses from a bridal website. They are informing me, over and over again, that the catalogue I requested (?!) will be in the mail shortly.

Even more hilarious, it informs me that my wedding day is December 24, 2005.

The last thing I have time for this year is to get married. Where the hell do these people get their information?

I invested an hour of my life tonight in watching The Simple Life. I had never watched it before this evening.

It was, I hate to admit, kind of funny to see the veins pop in the heads of the dudes they were working for.

A story:

When I was eighteen I worked in the kitchen of a restaurant that made little secret of its function as a mob front. The owner was named Steve and had fistfuls of gold rings and a giant gold Rolex - I don’t think it had any moving parts, it was just a giant chunk of gold on his wrist. He kept offering to lend me money. I politely refused every time (despite subsisting on various flavours of Ramen noodle at that point) and every time would kiss me on both cheeks and say, “You a good girl.” When I finally quit he added $500 to my last paycheque without saying anything. For what I suspect was a very dangerous man he was always really nice to me.

Anyway, I had worked in a few restaurants by that point (I had my first job washing dishes at thirteen) so I was used to kitchens and what restaurants were like, except this place employed some of the most devastatingly beautiful waitresses. Most of whom were so unbelievably stupid that I marvelled that these chicks didn’t fall off the food chain.

There was one named Billie who was an amazonian lingerie model - ten feet tall, all of it legs, with a mane of black hair, giant boobs and no hips to speak of. She seemed as familiar with menial labour as your average jar of mayonnaise. She came up to me in a panic one night.

“Ess-treed,” she hissed into the kitchen (she had some distant European accent), “Yoo eff to elp me.”

She had never spoken to me before.

“Um, yeah, what do you need?”

“I eff to make a pot of tea. Do you know how to make tea?”

Did I mention she was twenty-six years old?

Paris and Nicole had nothing on Billie.

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So let’s talk about failure, since a lot of other people email me every day about it.

Some people say, “Haha, you’ve only made a couple hundred bucks. You’re stupid and you suck.” I always console myself by saying that there’s a hell of a lot of 2005 left, and that there is always, until December 31, the possibility that everything will change tomorrow.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that I’m not worried about how the hell I’m going to make a million bucks in a year. I know even less how I’m going to keep this highly uncharacteristic positive attitude through the whole thing.

The kicker about the positive thinking and the faith and absolute unwaivering belief in this idea is that without it the idea isn’t worth doing.

I feel like, today, I need an external supply of positivity. Because if truth be told it’s a fuck of a long way between there and here.

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Watching Paris and Nicole is interesting. They have no idea how to function in a normal context, so they don’t and everyone kind of accepts it.

Likewise, I have no idea how to function as anything but a broke 25 year old teetering on the brink of getting another menial job to still go home every night and be broke. So the world accepts that too.

This is also a year of unlearning.