Reclaim, Redesign, Rebuild Me Now!

When Seth Rollins of the WWE tore his ACL, he came back from the injury with the mantra of Redesign, Rebuild, Reclaim.

That is what this GoFundMe is for.

My name is Bill, and I have a story. Everyone on this has a story. The long drawn out story is that I haven't been really doing well and I'm trying to do that now.

By Redesigning, Rebuilding, and Reclaiming.

I have a history. A long and drawn out history. Many of the people that see this is GoFundMe know about that history. Let's just say that my life has been going into a huge downward spiral since August of 2014 between losing a really good job, a year in a job limbo that caused emotional grief and problems, and my mother passing away.

Things need to change and I need to change them.

Redesign:

I currently get by. I need to do more go beyond getting by. I get paid enough that I can keep a roof over my head, food in my stomach, and a tiny bit extra for recreation (legal, non drug related recreation, like occasionally going to Karaoke or Pub Trivia with friends). I need to do more to get through this, and that is where the finances come in.

I have a job. I love the company I work for. I've made great friends on the job. It has a company culture that I love, it just doesn't pay. I'm putting this squarely on my own shoulders because I could be doing so much more, and I'm only now starting to break that cycle to do more.

I'm going to therapy weekly to try to work on issues of my past to see where I can go from from there. I also have been seeing a doctor about my weight. No health issues. I am just fat, but I'm losing at a regular pace that I don't require a gym membership (yet). I have lost 60 lbs since last October giving up Soda, Coffee, and Tea, and following that up with giving up Candy as of January. These little lifestyle changes are helping with the redesign phase.

So I either need a new job, a promotion and/or a side hustle. While I am looking for companies that I feel may have a similar culture, I would rather stay with where I am and bring in the side hustle, until I can make that a primary hustle.

That requires work and practice. I am on the Redesign phase to help bring me to the Rebuild phase. The work and practice are going to be a part of the design because if I can't get the work and practice down, I will not be able to rebuild properly.

What do I want to Rebuild?

Me.

To Rebuild Me I need to do more, and the redesign will help with the rebuild. I'm going to need to invest more in my medical care. I'm going to need to invest more in my diet, I'm going to need to invest more in my mind set. However I need to invest in my side hustle to actually get that to become profitable. I want to get back into my art for my side hustle. However all of these things require tools for me to rebuild with the redesign phase.

Tools in this case consist of:

* Art Supplies - Taking stock of my art supplies.. it turns out I left most of them when I left my ex. I need to restock. I am currently drawing with limited supplies, and I need to get some better supplies to work with.

* Clothes - Remember I had food in my stomach and a roof over my head? Sure. I am losing weight at a good enough pace, that my clothing is not catching up. It is hard to keep up with your self confidence when you are basically wearing tents that can fall down at any moment. While I am a fat man, I have clothes of a really fat man. I need to get some clothes that fit better overall. This will help when I go through to other job interviews while I am trying to hustle my side gig. It's hard to be confident when you feel like your pants are going to fall off your butt even when you are wearing a belt.

* I also need to fix my laptop. I have a wonderful loaned laptop, but my actual laptop has all of my other stuff on it for my other artistic endevours.

* I need to get my Creative Cloud Membership back. This is so I can get things set up for the web, and at some point move to direct drawing to the computer instead of paper, which will save time in processing the comic.

* I need to also get a replacement wire for my Cintiq Tablet that was damaged in my move. It's all linked together, so I can do all of the above.

* I need to take classes - My skill level is alright, but there are classes I can take singularly between Adult Schools and other schools to improve my skills. This would help pay for supplies, materials, and textbooks if necessary. Since I work in Downtown Boston, I'd basically be taking these courses at Suffolk and Emerson as a non-credit student just to increase my skill levels.

I need to work on practicing with my drawing again, both realistically and cartoon. I need to refine my realistic and practice that so I can work on reworking that to more of an ink format for cartoons. This is going to be the longest part of the whole thing because I need a lot more practice just to get me back to where I was. I will then be able to do what I plan to do.

Non-Comic Drawing

I want to restart my webcomic.

Rebuild

In 2014-2015 I had a webcomic. I probably lost my good job over it, but I can't prove it. I can't even show you the drawings from that one because the website is gone and it isn't in the Wayback Machine. However a subsequent comic when I ended that one was started.

NonChalant Squawk

Looks like a 10 year old did it huh? Yeah that's because I was drawing straight in photoshop without going back to the basics of drawing beforehand. I'm not going to do that this time. I'm going to work on the actual paper/pencil and move to ink to define skills that I can bring back over to the photoshop and the cintiq (I'm going to be practicing using both of them). So much of my pencil art will look like my older stuff. I need to work on converting that to a comic style, but I need to do more to get that.

Ideally I would like to build my strengths up so I can actually put together a good looking comic book style webcomic. I'd like to be able to hire people to pose for reference photos so I could work on that. I have friends that would probably be willing to pose up for me, but I may require all body shapes, sexes, and sizes to do things correctly. That is the long term stratgey.

However between that and now I want to be able to build up something that might actually be helpful to some people

I call it Me and My Dementor




This was just some scrap paper and a marker because I had to draw something because I was basically dying inside with all the rot and depression... and I'd like to build on this to something that can help people relate to going through massive depressions. My depression is different from yours, but my depression generally is like living with a dementor. I'd like to build upon this in a type of storyline so people can use it to actually feel something and maybe springboard people into getting help. I need my tools to help me to Rebuild not only myself, but others.  The tone to start is going to be pretty damn morbid, and it will be focusing on the struggle to get out of situations. It will also help with understanding that you might not completely be able to get away from things, but you can still survive and thrive.

This is especially important with other causes I support, especially Movember, because Men's Mental Health is something that tends to be overlooked because of "How men are supposed to behave."

I am hoping that this will help people be able to talk about their issues and get the help they need before resorting to drastic, life ending, circumstances. 

This will mean I need to get a new domain, space, etc. My goal is to use this to bring together a Paetron account so I can continue to work on this on the side while I work on something greater. I would love to be able to pull out of the 9 to 5 and do my art full time, but I am not in a place that I can do that, so that is a part of the rebuilding process.

Then I can Reclaim everything.

I prefer cash (so I can go and buy things ASAP at nearby stores and the like). However if you want to buy say art supplies, I'll put together a wishlist for specific supplies to buy to help out. Really I'd rather just go to the art store so I can test things out, but I can put something togehter. However the donations will be used for. I have put a funding goal of $5000. I don't plan on making that goal, but every bit will help. If I do make that goal then it will help more because it will alievate a lot of regular stress.

1. Fitting Clothes
2. Art Supplies
3. Laptop Repair
4. Cintiq Repair (and a new pen for it too)
5. Adobe Creative Cloud Membership (599.99 annually)
6. Art Workshops and Classes
7. Additional Art books to work on skills

Help with the Recreation of Me.