A very kind person has made sure that we aren’t sleeping on the streets. They didn’t have a room to spare, but on hearing that we were facing homelessness, figured a garage would at least provide shelter.
We hoped to save enough quickly to get a place to rent, but for six weeks now we’ve been sleeping on a stage block in that garage.
It’s become a little makeshift home, and it’s oddly the most welcomed I’ve ever felt in my years of forced wandering. Once my shock wore off, I had to accustom myself once again to the process of waking up each day. Being in the rainforest that is the Pacific Northwest has done wonders for our mental health. The air is cleaner here, the people are kinder.
For the past six months, I’ve been fighting hard to make writing my primary source of income. I’m a virtual assistant, a marketing content specialist, and a writer. The more I work at it, the better the pay and projects get.
Such work happens to be sporadic, so I don’t always get consistent paychecks. I generally research and describe products and services, still serving industries I ultimately find futile. Though my rapport grows with my clientele, I am living an odd irony of working from home while homeless.
People like me are seen as non-participatory in the workforce, so we don’t really count as unemployed or employed. I feel abandoned by the system as a rather privileged person. But my little chunk of injustice is only a taste of how many human beings are made to suffer. I am not angry for myself, but angry that my situation is so commonplace, so invisible, and so stagnant.
Here’s what I’m working on and how you can help:
Most authors don’t really involve their audiences until after the book is published, but because I’ve had so many people check in on me over the years, I want to reveal a little bit of the process. I’m putting up a full announcement later this week on where I’m at with my book, but you can read more about it on Patreon. It’s called Music in the Dream House (former working title Growing Up Jeub), it’s been four years since I started working on it, and much of the process is done. I’m finally ready to draft the proposal and full chapters. I have several agents picked out, and I will contact them once I have something they can work with me to finish and edit.
As for the blog, here’s what you can expect from my writings: Though the majority of my traffic flow comes from people who are curious about my family background, the majority of my reflections on child abuse and large families will be saved for my book. One aspect I’ll be discussing at length from my past, though, is in relation to current events surrounding homeschool families. Namely, the Turpin, Hart, and Allen-Rogers family cases have brought to light a very ugly loophole in homeschool oversight in the US.
Oh, also: last time I sat down to work on researching the details of inequality and injustice, I wrote a 30-page essay. I trust that you are all quite dedicated, but I want to break this information down into pieces slightly more bite-sized.
People who have been following my YouTube channel as well will want to hear about my religious stance, so, fine, I may also reveal some of what I’ve been working on in my practice as a solitary witch.
I want to finish this book. I want to post more on the blog. But unless I have more support for my own work, I must focus primarily on work for others for the sake of feeding this machine of capitalism that I cannot beat by turning its gears. Please don’t pledge if you do not have funds to spare. We’re in this together, and unfortunately the system demands a tax to be alive, much less to criticize it with candid content.
This is not a request for charity, this is asking a group of people to sponsor me in writing the content I’m endlessly drafting and piecing together, rarely with enough time to finalize and post anything. My aim is to treat my patrons with the respect of clients, people who are consistently receiving updates on what I’m working on, and able to answer polls about what topics are most interesting to them.
I’ve gotten this far thanks to the gifts and support of so many people, in unexpected times and places. Apparently there many kind people out there who want me to stay alive long enough to say what I am here to say. I am simply asking, will you support me so I can write?