A friend of mine told me to put aside my pride and do what I would advise another person in my same straits to do: ask your community for help.

So that is what I am doing. Asking my community for help. (By the way, Go Fund Me bizarrely recommends me to ask for the bizarrely large sum of $10,000 to solve my problems. I really don’t need all that money.)

Here is why I am doing this: my rent has been raised; I owe hundreds of dollars in late rent penalties; food prices, my greatest monthly cost, have increased from 50% to 100%; my monthly medicine costs have just increased fourfold; I owe hundreds of dollars to utility companies; I owe hundreds of dollars in car insurance; I drive a 28-year-old car that might break down at any time (I am NOT asking for a car, just some savings to deal with some inevitable breakdown); I don’t have the money to pay my bill for phone/internet services, which I rely upon to make a living; for the last three months I have lived on potatoes and rice.

Here are deeper reasons why I am doing this: I am a member of the precariat – that group of people who live from paycheck to paycheck with no savings or back-up financial resources. I have lived my life as an adjunct professor in a dying field (there were 800 applicants to the last job I applied for). Since then I have survived as a tutor, mostly for Chinese students trying to get into colleges and universities in the U.S. – and then, after a few months of wavering, my student clientele has just collapsed. Thank you Donald Trump. All I wanted to do in my life is to be a college teacher – but teaching college very seldom provides a stable career, and for those who live on the adjunct edges (which, oddly enough, is the majority of college teachers) the pay is miserable.

Here is another reason why I am doing this: My grandfather died at age 50 of a heart attack; my father died at age 45; and after two heart attacks and a bit of open-heart surgery, I simply did not think I would live this long. That was a mistake.

Oh yeah, one last thing: I am physically disabled with a diagnosis of a very weird disease – narcolepsy. I will tell you about it if you really want to know. Just send me an email, and I will tell you all about the fascinating story of me, sleeping.

And here is the shameful part: I know there are billions of people much worse off than I am.

Oh, by the way, I am also finally writing a book that I think will sell, and now that tutoring work has dried up, maybe (fighting narcolepsy) I might actually finish this one. At least this one is about contemporary political socio-economy, and is not involved with my academic field, so maybe there is a chance. I will tell you about it if you want to know. Just send me an email. I am trying.

If I make money (hahahahah – I am a skeptic with dreams, but mostly just a skeptic) I will donate the amount people give me here to charity.

What else can I do?