This is difficult to write as I am in need of help and am at the end of my tether. I wanted to post to the members to see if anyone can help, and having gotten Scott’s approval, this is my appeal.
I have what is most likely a compression fracture in a vertebrae. It causes back pain but also an abdominal nerve pain. I’ve had this for over a year. As such I spend all day managing the pain. The thing is – I have no health insurance. I can work for maybe 3 hours straight every morning, and then perhaps get another hour or so’s work done spread out over the rest of the day. I work from home, luckily. I do all sorts of things – anything really – to make a buck here and there. But I am in the process of losing most of my work because a rental property owner client I work with is selling almost all of their properties, and he is my last real client. I do marketing, copywriting, graphic design, plus I sell stuff on Craigslist etc. for people who don’t want to bother doing that themselves, and any other hustle opportunity that comes along. I have done many, many other jobs in my life. I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. I’m lucky in that I have very cheap rent, and have learned to be frugal to the nth degree, so my cost of living every month is what a normal person would think laughably small. I have no car, no cell phone, no cable tv.
I do NOT want charity, or handouts. What I’d like to ask for help in is if anyone out there amongst the members can offer work I can do at home for perhaps $30/day. Less if necessary. That’s really all I need. The internet seems full of small money earning opportunities but in reality I’ve found them to be bogus, and you waste a lot of time in the process of finding out that yet another method just doesn’t pay anything like promised.
Obviously I want to get this back seen to at some point in the future. The pain doesn’t get any worse, but it doesn’t get any better. For the time being I can live with it as I’ve learned to mitigate it with painkillers, muscle rub, and simply not being vertical. But my immediate pressing need is for income to subsist on. The pain is straightforward to deal with, but the stress and worry about money is what is really getting to me.
Many thanks.
Mart
9 replies on “An Appeal”
I really don’t know what I’m going to do. Much longer and I will be out on the street. I’d sleep in the car if I had one. I don’t want to sound dramatic, but frankly I’m desperate.
Hey Martin, I finally had a thought. The User Guide I wrote for my HTML editor app, “TypeMetal”, has never been subjected to review or editing by someone else, and really ought to be. I’d love for you to apply your writing+editing skills to improving it. The results would be great to have and a truly helpful motivator for me to get a new version out. DM me your email address if you’re interested and willing to subject yourself to my prose (a cut above Vogon poetry, at least). If you see ways to improve the layout/styling for readability too, even better!
Martin! I am racking my small brain and trawling my To Do list for ideas. (How’s that for using spelling words?) Lots of small maintenance to do on this old house that I’d love to have help with, but obviously I’m clear across the continent from you. I have a side business I should kick-start again, but that needs some of my time too so unfortunately it’s not ready to jump on yet…
One thing I’ve been wanting to see for a long time is Bill’s wonderful “Silent America” essays revived as an eBook and/or here on the site. I know Bill insists they are dated but to me they are timeless distillations of the essential lessons that we must hand down any and every way we can. If Bill is game, I’d be very willing to chip in on the cost of whatever cleanup/editing/transcribing is needed to get them ready fo [re-]publication. I went so far as to manually enter and proofread Freedom and Honor myself several years ago, with the idea of presenting them to Bill as examples in hopes of getting the green light to complete the set for his use, but I never took it farther.
Just an idea. I’ll try to think of more, and I’m sure our loyal crew here at BW.com will do the same. I am sure there must be some way we can apply your talents while helping a fellow Stratolounger.
many thanks Troy! I would consider anything and everything to earn a buck. I’ve done many ebooks for clients and for myself, but it’s been awhile since I did one. Frankly I’m baffled and disappointed at the lack of response to my appeal. Maybe I worded it too specifically with how much money i need to keep my head above water, and should not have talked details. Maybe it offends people. I was laying my cards on the table. I have nobody here to help. My girlfriend is in Arkansas tending to her poor dying Mom. Then she’ll return to Utah where she takes care of her son when he needs it as he has Lyme disease. So it’s me and the four walls here. As I say, I can manage the pain, but the stress of no money coming in is undermining me completely.
The way my life is, I check in here far less often than I would like, and I suspect the same is true for others. Your post is recent and came mid-week. Give it time and try not to read into it. We have a good crew here who I know are inventive and resourceful and would love to help.
Do book sales help any? You have quite a catalog to choose from!
ha! But that’s not me. I did have a very popular web site in the early – pre-Google – days of the internet. I was getting hundreds of thousands of visitors a month, back when that meant almost everyone who was online, and published a small book based on the single panel comic. It was called Daze of Our Lives. I also made 3 ebooks from it, here: https://www.amazon.com/Lives-history-Inventor-bagpipes-McBagpipe-ebook/dp/B00AYOGUEC/ here: https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Ethelberthas-unplucked-eyebrows-suitor-ebook/dp/B00AYPM4C8/ and here: https://www.amazon.com/Damnation-mustache-tangled-confounded-undergarments-ebook/dp/B00AR5KK8U/
Hilarious. I searched Amazon a while back after you mentioned having some books published there, and it seemed entirely plausible for a fan of Bill’s to have published books on warfare and medieval thrillers! Ah, for the long gone days of the early digital frontier. Well you have one new reader, for what it’s worth! You should add those links to your BW profile!
well Daze is bittersweet for me now. At the height of it’s popularity I got sick with a skin disease that went on for 4 years. Skin doctors were of no help. It essentially bankrupted me. The never-ending itching (you cannot escape it, even asleep) was driving me insane and I lost all interest in writing humor. I eventually got rid of the disease, but by then the damn domain had been scooped up by some scumbag who turned it into an online casino site or something. I still have all the work, and always planned to revive it and expand on it, but life, such as it is, got in the way.
this was the book I published. Sold enough to fans of the site to just about break even. I designed it as a cute little “gift book.” Never got it into stores. Don’t try to order it on Amazon as they have none and won’t be able to ship it!