Fair warning: This post is about money. This post is not intended to make anybody feel good. This post was not written by a happy camper. This is the post where I nag you, blame you, and shame you...because your lack of response to my project isn't leaving me any more pleasant options. If you are living on less than US$1000 per month or the local equivalent, like some Blogjob bloggers who earn pennies by commenting on each other's blog posts, please click back and comment on a book review.
As regular readers know, the project is discussed at Indiegogo, a fundraising site, so anybody who has any kind of bank account may contribute; you don't have to use Paypal, although there's a Paypal link right in the sidebar to your left. Check out the new update (an "Updates" tab should show up about the middle of the screen).
Y'know, when I set up a fundraising page, I anticipated two outcomes: either (a) the project would be funded and all would be well, or (b) a handful of e-friends would want to chip in a dollar here and five dollars there, so I'd end up having to refund all their insufficient funds, which would be a bore. I didn't anticipate that no readers would want to support this project. But that's what Indiegogo is still showing: zero funding.
Gentle Readers, I don't ask people for money if I have any viable options. And I don't want to hear any garbage about my emotional mood--which is fine--when I say that, if this project isn't fully funded, fast, I'll go home and stop eating. I've always thought that, if others don't appreciate what we do enough for us to earn a decent living at it, that's the ethical thing to do. Not rob banks or sell drugs--plenty of people my age, in my part of the world, are faking disabilities to get prescriptions for resale, but that's not for me. Not continue scrimping and scraping and scrounging while other people get rich at our expense--that doesn't serve their Highest Good any better than ours. And certainly not consider any form of welfare cheating; any ethical person who's able to work should be willing to work and, by the same token, their neighbors should be willing to pay for what they do.
And, to fulfill my obligation to throw in an Amazon book link...readers who've not been following me for very long are encouraged to read Broke
. When that book came out I was like, "How reliable can an entertainer be on economics?" Since then, Real Economists have agreed that if anything Glenn Beck was optimistic. Let him explain to you why...in 1970, I believe, welfare cheating was morally less vile than prostitution; not now.
. When that book came out I was like, "How reliable can an entertainer be on economics?" Since then, Real Economists have agreed that if anything Glenn Beck was optimistic. Let him explain to you why...in 1970, I believe, welfare cheating was morally less vile than prostitution; not now.
And it's not that other people don't find uses for what I do, make, or resell. That, they definitely do. When I've not been unpaid or underpaid for writing, in the past ten years, I've been equally unpaid or underpaid for home nursing, baby-sitting, tutoring, storekeeping, even for knitting...there are people venal enough to take a $5 handknitted cap and not pay for it, and one of them is sitting within 200 yards from where I'm typing this. The problem is not and has never been with my work. It's with other people's willingness to pay for what they are, in fact, taking at every opportunity.
I enjoy living. I enjoy writing. I don't know how many people really enjoy reading what I write, but the computer shows that plenty of people are reading it. I enjoy eating. I don't enjoy the days in between paid jobs, like today, when I can't afford to eat. (I also don't enjoy the days when the last meal on which I spent money is making me sick because it contained GMO grains and/or glyphosate "pesticides"; between one of those things and the other, I've got through a lot of days without solid food...literally living on soda pop and/or sweet coffee.)
I spent the last of the last payment I collected on a cheap road-junk meal yesterday. Who knows when the next person will pay for anything I've made or done. Maybe later today, maybe not for another month...I'm tired of waiting to find out.
That Indiegogo page shows a wide range of "perks" people can use to get more than their money's worth in return for their investment. And yes, it is an investment that might lead to profit later on, as well as (for those who contribute enough) a chance to support your favorite 501(c)(3) charity.
If that page isn't showing your substantial contribution, you're telling me, loud and clear, to go home and die. So of course that really makes me care about you enough to put up with any "But-but-but" blather that might ease your emotional feelings about this. Not.
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