Jeff-xit: help Jeff return to California, leaving UK (sadly)

Hello friends, family, and colleagues. For those of you who have been following my Odyssean misadventures of the past few years, you are probably aware that the time has come when I’ve decided, or had the decision thrust upon me, to call it a day on my efforts to gain either permanent residency in the UK and my beloved Wales or to find a new long-term home elsewhere in Europe or Europe-adjacent countries, and to return to the US. It breaks my heart, all over again, to have to leave Wales, my friends and the life I spent most of the last 11 years creating here, possibly forever(?). It seems a particularly inauspicious time to go back to the US. Nevertheless, between losing my job in Morocco, discovering the UAE job scam, and failing to find either a visa-sponsoring position in the UK or reliable online work, I have run out of options, of resources, and, by the end of January, of time, and will have to depart by 31 January. I’ve been able to keep myself afloat the last 6 months by selling a few instruments and occasional phone work, but this has garnered me just enough to keep me fed and the occasional sojourn to a cafe.

At least I will be going back to a promising situation; I will be staying with my niece and her partner in their lovely home in Eureka, northern California, tucked between the redwoods and the deep blue sea. I will have the possibility of finding even a simple job at a cafe or the like and some sorely-missed stability to sort things out.

However, a few more obstacles remain between here and there, and so I’ve decided I need to start a GoFundMe in order to, well, to simply get there, as well as tie up my loose ends here in Cardiff. I’m always uncomfortable with things like this, and I realize this is not the best time of year to be asking for assistance, being just after the holiday season and New Year. I also realize that a number of you have already been very generous to me over the past four years, for which I am deeply grateful. Now I have to ask once more, hopefully for the last time, for one more *push* to get me over the wall, so to speak, to somewhere where I can hunker down and mend the pieces of my life into a coherent whole again.

I felt it necessary to wait until now to do this because I still had a few options I was exploring, like the Leverhulme Fellowship, and had my efforts there found any success I probably would stay in Europe somewhere for a few months more. I knew I wouldn’t know the outcomes until mid-December, so I set the first week of January as my Final Decision time.

My first priority is money for my plane ticket to California; depending how early I can book a flight a direct flight can start at around £500/$600US, plus two checked pieces of baggage, and possibly an extra seat to bring my guitar with me although this is optional. I think a reasonable estimate in total for this would be around £800/$1,000US.

Second, it would be really nice to have a bit of money for my basic living expenses like groceries to float me through my first month or so once I get to Eureka. I don’t really know how much that would be, as it’s been over 5 years since I was last in America and from what I hear everything there has gotten even more expensive since then.

Finally, my ideal is to raise enough to be able to deal with all my boxes of *stuff* that has sat in the attic of my old house on Pearl St. and currently the attic of my friend David’s house since 2022. This consists of my instrument collection, my books, and oh yeah a few boxes of personal effects. It’s been very comforting and motivating to have had access to it for the past six months while I’ve been staying at David’s, but now I’m leaving for good and it needs to be dealt with. It’s safe here for a while longer yet, but the sooner I can move it out the better, so David will not have to deal with it all on his own. I don’t expect to be able to ship all of it out before I leave but I would really like to get maybe half of it out, especially the heavier items like books that need two people to bring down safely from the attic. With this in mind then, I’m setting my total goal for this GoFundMe at about £2,000, or $2,500US. I acknowledge this may prove to be beyond our ability to meet at this time, I am just making this my ideal and see how it goes.

I don’t know how much visibility I can give this post on fb–the algorithm is a fickle, somewhat incompetent god, and many people have nearly abandoned fb for the greener fields of bluesky and the like–so if you’d like to share it on your own walls to help boost it I would appreciate that. I will also repost it a few times, so if you see it more than once just know I’m only trying to boost it, not browbeat anyone hahaha.

I greatly appreciate any contributions anyone is able to make. It’s customary in crowdsource campaigns to to offer supporters some kind of tangible token of appreciation, like a copy of a book or whatnot–unfortunately, I’m not quite in such a position right now, but I’m optimistic that with my new-found stability will come the time and mental focus to set to work on exactly that, as well as music recording and video projects. In the near future, then, I will keep a list of my fans and supporters and you will be the first to know about my successes. Thank you all for taking the time to read this and for whatever support you can lend, however tangible or intangible it may be; everything helps!