Help Me Work!
Donation protected
Hi there! My name is August Brown and I'm a queer Canadian illustrator and cartoonist, and I'm in a bit of a tight spot. You can read a detailed explanation of how I came to be in this situation below, but, so you don't have to hunt for the important bits, here's the short version:
The Problem: The laptop I've been using for more than half a decade is slowly but surely dying, and I can't afford to replace it because we're in medical debt and, because of a loan we had to take out to cover half of it, also in overdraft. Both of those issues need to be taken care of before I can consider replacing it, which is bad because I need my computer to make money.
The funds will be used for: Paying off my overdraft balance, paying down the remaining balance owed to my daughter's ADHD assessment psychologist and purchasing a laptop with specs that are at least on par with my old one.
How soon do we need these funds: I have no specific time-line, but honestly, the sooner, the better. Overdraft fees are murder, and if we pay at least half of the remaining balance, the psychologist will likely be willing to let us finance the remainder monthly. The sooner I can replace my computer, the sooner I can actually get back to work.
What your support will mean to me: It would mean everything, honestly. I feel anxious when I'm not working, and not working gives me a lot more to be anxious about, because it means keeping our bills paid is that much more difficult. The overdraft fees are probably the most stressful part, because they just keep piling up, so whatever money we can allocate to eliminate our overdraft status is immediately eaten up by fees and we're back where we started. Having a working computer would help me with both the overdraft AND the medical debt by allowing me to work, but I can't do that until at least the overdraft is eliminated. It's a frustrating situation, and not one I can afford to fix on my own.
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More details about my situation:
I haven't been able to create new comic pages or even finish the ones that I have half done for the last month, and that is because my laptop seems to be on its last legs after 6 years of near constant use. One of its two fans recently died, and while disassembling it to clean it out and a cooling pad have helped a little, it's not enough, or even the extent of the issues I've been experiencing with this computer for the past year.
There's a long list of problems it has been having, but aside from the overheating and memory issues that reseating my RAM did nothing to help, the one other issue that's been getting steadily more worrying is its outright rejection of most usb peripherals. It started with a single wireless mouse that, if the usb dongle was left plugged in upon booting it up, would cause my computer to experience a bluescreen error as soon as I logged in. I replaced my mouse and the issue went away for a while, but then it started happening with my new mouse, my old usb keyboard (about 15 of my most used keys on my laptop’s native keyboard are non-functional from use, which is why I use an external keyboard), my new wireless usb keyboard and most recently, my phone if it is plugged in to charge when the laptop comes out of sleep mode.
There are only 2 other usb peripherals I own and those are 1) the cooling pad that's picking up the slack for my busted fan and 2) the input cable for my drawing tablet. At this rate I can only assume it's a matter of time before either of those start to cause bluescreen errors, and bluescreen errors for either of those things would either make it more impossible to work than it already is and/or potentially make transferring all of my stuff to a new computer really difficult.
The obvious answer is to just buy a new computer, but I’m not in a place where I can afford to do so--we have just under $2k in owed medical debt (adhd assessment for our kid was not covered by OHIP or my husband's insurance through work) that must be taken care of before I can justify spending any money on something that I need, and I’m already in overdraft thanks to the diminished pay my husband has been on for the past eight or so months thanks to the work loan he took out to pay for the first half of our daughter’s assessment.
I’m not necessarily interested in buying a brand new, top of the line computer, but I do need something that at least has similar specs to the one I’m using now in terms of graphic card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M), RAM (16 GB) and processor (Intel Core i7-4710HQ [email redacted]Hz, 2501 Mhz, 4 Cores, 8 Logical Processors). It also needs to be 64-bit and running Windows 10 (my current computer runs on 8.1 but not upgrading when it was free to do so was a decision I made because one of my main art programs was not compatible with 10. SAI2 was released last year and is compatible with 10, so that’s no longer a concern).
I don’t care about screen size because my drawing tablet is 27 inches and I mostly use my laptop screen for watching youtube while I draw, and I am willing to take a downgrade in terms of hard drive space (I like the freedom of having 2TB of space on my current machine, but I’m not seeing a lot of options above 1TB right now, and if that means getting a second external drive, then it is what it is.
My previous laptop cost just over $2k in late 2013, and it looks like I’m probably looking at between $1400 and $1900 before tax for a new machine on par with my old one. Which is...uh...a lot.
Right now I think that the most frustrating thing is that all I can really do is ask for people to chip in. I can’t offer digital commissions for obvious reasons, and while I can offer small marker and possibly watercolour commissions, I’m not sure it would really put a scratch in the amount I need to do this.
All told, paying off that remaining medical debt, getting out of overdraft and replacing my laptop is going to cost me about $4k, which feels like an impossible amount. This last year has been difficult mentally AND financially--my daughter was really struggling with sensory overload and processing issues and managing her emotions before we found a medication that worked, and up until a couple weeks ago, I basically had to be on call with the school and ready to pick her up at a moment’s notice if she started melting down and nobody could snap her out of it. There was a point where we were legitimately considering pulling her from school in favour of home schooling, and rather than spending my days working, I was spending them on the phone with her teachers and/or the VP, at frequent appointments with her doctor while we tried medication after medication and generally stressing myself toward a nervous breakdown.
Things are a lot better now on that front, but producing less has meant making less and it really does add up. And now that I’m itching to work and in a place where I can reasonably assume that I probably won’t have to drop everything and pick my kid up from school, I can’t, because my laptop is at the point in its 2 year long decline that I feel like if I push it more than I have to, it’s going to make loading a new computer up with all of my preferences and settings and programs a complete nightmare.
Anyhow, every little bit helps.
The Problem: The laptop I've been using for more than half a decade is slowly but surely dying, and I can't afford to replace it because we're in medical debt and, because of a loan we had to take out to cover half of it, also in overdraft. Both of those issues need to be taken care of before I can consider replacing it, which is bad because I need my computer to make money.
The funds will be used for: Paying off my overdraft balance, paying down the remaining balance owed to my daughter's ADHD assessment psychologist and purchasing a laptop with specs that are at least on par with my old one.
How soon do we need these funds: I have no specific time-line, but honestly, the sooner, the better. Overdraft fees are murder, and if we pay at least half of the remaining balance, the psychologist will likely be willing to let us finance the remainder monthly. The sooner I can replace my computer, the sooner I can actually get back to work.
What your support will mean to me: It would mean everything, honestly. I feel anxious when I'm not working, and not working gives me a lot more to be anxious about, because it means keeping our bills paid is that much more difficult. The overdraft fees are probably the most stressful part, because they just keep piling up, so whatever money we can allocate to eliminate our overdraft status is immediately eaten up by fees and we're back where we started. Having a working computer would help me with both the overdraft AND the medical debt by allowing me to work, but I can't do that until at least the overdraft is eliminated. It's a frustrating situation, and not one I can afford to fix on my own.
------------------------------------------
More details about my situation:
I haven't been able to create new comic pages or even finish the ones that I have half done for the last month, and that is because my laptop seems to be on its last legs after 6 years of near constant use. One of its two fans recently died, and while disassembling it to clean it out and a cooling pad have helped a little, it's not enough, or even the extent of the issues I've been experiencing with this computer for the past year.
There's a long list of problems it has been having, but aside from the overheating and memory issues that reseating my RAM did nothing to help, the one other issue that's been getting steadily more worrying is its outright rejection of most usb peripherals. It started with a single wireless mouse that, if the usb dongle was left plugged in upon booting it up, would cause my computer to experience a bluescreen error as soon as I logged in. I replaced my mouse and the issue went away for a while, but then it started happening with my new mouse, my old usb keyboard (about 15 of my most used keys on my laptop’s native keyboard are non-functional from use, which is why I use an external keyboard), my new wireless usb keyboard and most recently, my phone if it is plugged in to charge when the laptop comes out of sleep mode.
There are only 2 other usb peripherals I own and those are 1) the cooling pad that's picking up the slack for my busted fan and 2) the input cable for my drawing tablet. At this rate I can only assume it's a matter of time before either of those start to cause bluescreen errors, and bluescreen errors for either of those things would either make it more impossible to work than it already is and/or potentially make transferring all of my stuff to a new computer really difficult.
The obvious answer is to just buy a new computer, but I’m not in a place where I can afford to do so--we have just under $2k in owed medical debt (adhd assessment for our kid was not covered by OHIP or my husband's insurance through work) that must be taken care of before I can justify spending any money on something that I need, and I’m already in overdraft thanks to the diminished pay my husband has been on for the past eight or so months thanks to the work loan he took out to pay for the first half of our daughter’s assessment.
I’m not necessarily interested in buying a brand new, top of the line computer, but I do need something that at least has similar specs to the one I’m using now in terms of graphic card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M), RAM (16 GB) and processor (Intel Core i7-4710HQ [email redacted]Hz, 2501 Mhz, 4 Cores, 8 Logical Processors). It also needs to be 64-bit and running Windows 10 (my current computer runs on 8.1 but not upgrading when it was free to do so was a decision I made because one of my main art programs was not compatible with 10. SAI2 was released last year and is compatible with 10, so that’s no longer a concern).
I don’t care about screen size because my drawing tablet is 27 inches and I mostly use my laptop screen for watching youtube while I draw, and I am willing to take a downgrade in terms of hard drive space (I like the freedom of having 2TB of space on my current machine, but I’m not seeing a lot of options above 1TB right now, and if that means getting a second external drive, then it is what it is.
My previous laptop cost just over $2k in late 2013, and it looks like I’m probably looking at between $1400 and $1900 before tax for a new machine on par with my old one. Which is...uh...a lot.
Right now I think that the most frustrating thing is that all I can really do is ask for people to chip in. I can’t offer digital commissions for obvious reasons, and while I can offer small marker and possibly watercolour commissions, I’m not sure it would really put a scratch in the amount I need to do this.
All told, paying off that remaining medical debt, getting out of overdraft and replacing my laptop is going to cost me about $4k, which feels like an impossible amount. This last year has been difficult mentally AND financially--my daughter was really struggling with sensory overload and processing issues and managing her emotions before we found a medication that worked, and up until a couple weeks ago, I basically had to be on call with the school and ready to pick her up at a moment’s notice if she started melting down and nobody could snap her out of it. There was a point where we were legitimately considering pulling her from school in favour of home schooling, and rather than spending my days working, I was spending them on the phone with her teachers and/or the VP, at frequent appointments with her doctor while we tried medication after medication and generally stressing myself toward a nervous breakdown.
Things are a lot better now on that front, but producing less has meant making less and it really does add up. And now that I’m itching to work and in a place where I can reasonably assume that I probably won’t have to drop everything and pick my kid up from school, I can’t, because my laptop is at the point in its 2 year long decline that I feel like if I push it more than I have to, it’s going to make loading a new computer up with all of my preferences and settings and programs a complete nightmare.
Anyhow, every little bit helps.
Organizer
August Brown
Organizer
Rd, ON
