Funland Has to Leave Idaho

When the lease on the apartment I've signed ends in January, I'm afraid that my struggles with depression and setbacks regarding saving money for the move will leave me out on the street, far from home. I'm asking to raise $2,500, and if you'd like to help, please read below for context and my intentions to move back to my support network.

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Well, Attendees... I have to move again. Funland's tents and booths are set down in Boise, Idaho right now. Idaho is 26 car-hours away from my friends and one "family" member that are my support network, in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Now, why did I move so far away in the first place? I in fact did not intend to be so displaced, or in such a place where there are no business opportunities for Funland. You see, some Attendees might remember I had moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado late last year. This was a pre-ordained, planned-on relocation with my newly married and Army-serving "best friend." Hour one, I have not put my clothes in the closet, I have not put the sheets on my bed, I was asked bluntly and with no emotion, "When is the earliest you can leave?"

Considering I had done this relocation in order to save money, to grow my Patreon and to find more time, the type of time wherein I'd work out the tax information and legitimacy of Irresponsible Funland as an art business, I was devastated. To this day, I remain hurt by this decision and I'll be right honest, it was a betrayal and several broken promises within one sentence. This person is no longer my friend. However, I will admit that his grace was appreciated, giving me some time to prepare. After meditiation and some concession, I feel that the situation as a whole revealed to me how and why my Arkansas relationships are simply stronger, and the potential for Funland to grow, physically, was not bound to moving elsewhere.

And Attendees, I ask you: this friend offered me the relocation strategy THREE TIMES, twice I declined because he offered no numbers, no definite locations, no relevant and concrete information about moving. Third time, I hear how much I'd have to pay per month, I hear where we're going, I hear how long my friend is stationed at this Army base and I began planning accordingly, with hope.
Hope dashed on the first damn day. Is that what a friend does?

I digress.

Colorado Springs is 13 hours from Little Rock. Boise is 13 hours from Colorado Springs. Let me tell you why I went to Boise.

In an incredibly fragile, overwhelmed and frightened for my life moment, I asked a client whom I had become well enough friends with, and had been building a solid rapport with, what I should do, and they offered to move me out to their apartment, recently signed lease, suburban location.  It would take some months, so from November until March, I got to sit. Indeed, I was supposed to move later, around the beginning of June, but then the quarantines started, and I knew I had to get out early.

This client friend had a roommate already, one I did not know and still barely conversate now.  Client friend actively works full time at a call center job that brings them down. But they were willing to go above and beyond to rescue me from a ticking clock of a situation in Colorado. They are paying for my "friend's" decision too, and a sum I cannot potentially pay back, living with them, or here in this living situation.

3 people, in an aprtment together? That was made for 2? How can Funland not afford to keep living in Boise? Well...

The client friend roommate is the main breadwinner here, as the other individual here before I was has not worked since June. Full stop. Plays video games almost the entire day they are awake, and I've not seen them work for Doordash or Uber or any delivery service this person said they would take on. In addition to that? They took on a ward! *WHILE HAVING NO JOB, THIS PERSON BROUGHT YET ANOTHER ROOMMATE IN HERE.* This ward is in a desperate situation as well, and I feel for them, but they are yet still not generating money, nor are they inclined towards fixing that.

I have Funland/art in general. I've spent 11, now going on 12 years learning how to make my work appealing enough to earn your business and attention, Funland. My prices are alright, they'll be changing in January. But the rub lies in this: my client roommate cannot afford this any longer, and the two living here have had an open disregard for his mental health as well as mine.

Yelling in the middle of the night at video games, never contributing to the cleanliness of our apartment, being racist when they thought no one was listnening, waving their sidearm around in their underwear when a threat wasn't anywhere to be found.  These people have wore me and my client friend down, and thus, I arrive at my final point.

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The lease on the apartment will expire in January, and all, now 4 individuals here have to find somewhere else to live. Rent and general cost of living in this area is too high, and indeed, I set a goal with my Patreon to try and afford rent in Arkansas, the lowest rates in all the United States.

I met that goal in August. It's one of the few sources of personal pride I will retain through the depression, work-crippling anxiety, and lack of mood regulation that I have experienced here. I am far from my home. I left it in order to work on myself, make a savings account, find ways to alleviate the mental obstacles I was letting hinder my relationships with 'the main homies,' I call them.

Ready or not, I have to shack up again.

$2,500. My client friend spent more than that getting me here, but I believe that if I cut costs in travel, hotel, and food, this amount is the upper ceiling I can ask from you, Funland. Two and a half thousand dollars, would, to my estimations based on a $500 a month apartment in Little Rock:

- cover administration fees and initial utility costs
- allow for the 2-3 months of rent initially
- afford transportation back to Arkansas from Boise (most likely my bus)
- afford meds for one month while I transition back home
- freight my belongings via Frieghtliner (desk, computer, the trash bag worht of clothes I own)

While the connection is too complex to explain here, I have a "family" member, a close friend with a house and a couch for me to temporarily sleep on while I apply for appartements during the month of February. That situation will be strained for as long as I have to battle credit checks, but I'm certain that, for the 4 addresses I've logged and am keeping track of, as well as any more that might pop up in these dire times for the housing market, that I can find a place to set down a sleeping bag and a yoga ball, in lieu of a desk chair and the Amazon Basics bed I have here but cannot freight back due to size/weight.

My goal date for this, admittedly heavy, amount of funds is January 24th, 2021. I will use whatever money this fundraiser has gained as well as my Patreon money before February 1st to get back home.

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I have battled depression every single day since moving here and that makes it much more of a struggle to manage my time, which in turn has left me unable to pull some Herculean effort in a matter of a week to turn this around by business and grit alone. I've begged before on Twitter and my other socials in lieu of making this gofundme, I've done huge YCH batches that I'm still managing time for, I've got an on-going, ever-increasing commission queue. This is truly my last ditch effort. I keep my means low, but it's hard to keep up regardless. Since the other roomate lost their job and brought in someone else that eats up yet more electricity and water, our apartment's costs of those two things has increased by almost double. As I make this fundraiser, I've skipped buying meds this month, just to age the $200 that would buy them now, to next month, when I'm really going to need it.

I've been homeless before, with a 9-5 job. The depression took away that job. I've no college degree, the depression robbed me of that too. I will not let it take my creativity, not when I've fought it and scorned it and have made so many decisions despite it. This depression did not make my gallery, doesn't write my comic, and I'm determined to not let it take my life.

My depression has not, and will not, keep me from asking for help when I want to do what I know will give me strength, give me support. No questioning here - when I can see and laugh with the one "family" member that has told me "I believe in you, you can do this," when I can hug my best friend that taught me how to play bass, when I can return from this 'adventure' I set out on, I believe I'll finally begin to seek professional help.

Going into Colorado, I knew it was going to be temporary. This borrowed time has run out.

Your generosity, donator, is invaluable. Your donation isn't going to someone frivioulsy eating out every day, to someone smoking a pack of cigarettes every day, to someone without a goal in life or a ten year plan for their self-made business. Your hard work earned you a paycheck, and I'd like to reciprocate it - I do not have the opportunity to do that when I'm staring down yet another displacement.

Have a great day, and a better tomorrow.