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How to Make Art Without Worrying About Money
On Technology and Social Mobility
In Toronto Life, Steve Kupferman writes of surviving an illegal rooming house in Kensington Market. I’ll leave the descriptive bits to him, but what’s notable is how he actually got out of that situation [emphasis added]:
My landlord patched up the bathroom, but he never fixed the roof. The leak spread to my bedroom, forcing me to set up a system of catch basins and cardboard shields to prevent tea-coloured ceiling water from dripping on my bed. The aura of neglect began to affect morale in the house, and our communal chore wheel fell into disuse. A layer of grime accumulated in the common areas, and I once watched two mice wrestle over a crumb of stale vegan cupcake on the kitchen floor.
As my graduation neared, I agonized over my next steps. Almost accidentally, I landed a decent job with a small tech company. I had started writing freelance for local news websites. Suddenly, a revelation: I could leave. Rather than continue paying into the landlord’s insane protection racket, I could get a place of my own, where the oven would never explode and I’d have an entire fridge to myself. The thought had never occurred to me before.
Another excerpt related to this, from this piece in Wired on outfoxing the gig economy, covering Jeffrey Fang…
