Keep Jason in the Arts (And Save a Life in the Process)

Jason Wallace is organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

I feel a great deal of anguish and shame having to come forward like this and rely so heavily on the kindness and patience of friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers, but my circumstances are particularly dire, and needs must.

Bad start. Downer tone. People are leaving their seats.

Let's start over.

WHO ARE YOU?

I'm Jason Wallace. As of the time of this writing, I'm now just five years older than one of the best roleplaying games ever made for the Super Nintendo; if you've ever suplexed a haunted train with a himbo martial artist, you can do the math.

I've been in the business of live creative entertainment for about twenty years now, and as such I've fully dedicated every fruit of my education in literature and theatre, my modest talent, my passion for characters and storytelling, and the lion's share of my time to interpreting and performing works of art. I hoped (and continue to hope) that my efforts there would help even one person to experience new perspectives, to feel emotions that they'd thought lost or forbidden to them, and to better appreciate the beauty and pain of living a human life on this earth.

WHY SHOULD I CARE?

As if that lifepath wasn't challenging enough to choose (in personal terms, economic terms, and more), I've struggled with Type I diabetes and clinical depression since I was a young teen, making what should've been a joyful, imaginative process regularly full of self-doubt, hopelessness, and - to be frank - suicidal ideation.

To top it off, the last two years have been excruciatingly trying for me, exacerbating the already tricksy issues mentioned above:

My marriage to a lovely, genuinely kind woman collapsed, due to a comingling of my frustration with life and selfishness and my poor mental health.
My entry into the education field - teaching disadvantaged young people about the English language and its literature at a non-profit high school - had to be cut short due to the surprisingly heavy emotional and personal toll of the work.
Unemployment caused me to lose my apartment, and I was forced to abandon the majority of my belongings and drive cross-country to stay with some extraordinarily charitable friends in Washington state.
I couldn't find work in the Seattle area (despite some promising interviews and leads), and that led to 1) my car being repossessed and 2) a mental health spiral resulting in a brief institutionalization for suicide risk.
I was forced to fly to my home state of Georgia, having no other feasible options and not wanting to further burden my Washington friends, and have been struggling here with housing, unemployment, and mounting debt ever since.

So here I am, frankly as desperate as I've ever been, feeling lower than low, acknowledging that - in some respects - I don't even deserve your time, much less your support, nonetheless asking you:

If my work in the arts, my presence in your life, or just the idea of my continued existence has ever, for even a moment, brought something valuable to you - wit and humor, partnership and camaraderie, personal connection, all of the above - I humbly ask that you donate anything you can, anything at all, to help me back on my feet.

To keep me making and expressing art, as much as that's worth.

To have the opportunity to continue reflecting on and growing from these trials and tribulations, rather than having them destroy me.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH THE FUNDS?

Support myself and my dog Francis while I continue diligently searching for local work, which includes:

Acquiring basic necessities like food, insulin, and gas.
Securing an apartment for myself in a nearby locale (e.g. Albany, Tifton, Macon, etc.)
Reactivating my phone to help better communicate with potential employers and the community.
Chipping away at the mounting debt from my defaulted auto loan.

Here's a picture of Francis to, of course, help emotionally manipulate you. Do you really want him to have to go work in the coal mines?