Well! It's been quite the 24 hours since my manifesto of sorts went up. My first day on Kickstarter has been highly successful - I'm almost at 20% of the funding goal after just the first day! I owe all of that to you guys, as the community once again shows me just how awesome it is. I'm honored and humbled, and I'm not sure exactly how to express my gratitude other than to say thank you.
Quite a bit has happened, and I have some things I feel the need to talk about.
First and foremost, I still can't get over the response that my diary post got - I'm not even meaning the donations over at Kickstarter, just the comments that people left. I was, unfortunately, asleep when it first went up on the Community Spotlight, so I wasn't here when the huge influx of comments came, but I tried to answer every single one. I think of all the things and all the feedback I got yesterday, the one that I'm proudest of is the fact that I inspired someone to start drawing again. I think that was the most touching and humbling, though I really appreciated and was very touched by all the comments people left.
I went to the store earlier this evening and used a Western Union gift card someone sent me for a commission I'm working on, and I'm not sure if it had hidden fees that I wasn't aware of or what but when I tried to check out it only covered two dollars and some change of my roughly $16.00 purchase. It's not the first time I've ever been in and checkout line and found out that I have less money than I thought I did, whether I simply miscounted, or someone shorts me somewhere because everybody has to go into my wallet for me to get my money (though I've been stolen from far less than you might think), and I'm sure lots of people who have been low income can identify with the embarrassment and frustration. I was oddly lucky in that a girl behind me in line is someone that I've helped out before, which I'll explain in a minute, she picked up the rest of the balance for me and insisted it was her way of paying me back. That meant a lot to me.
So the story about that goes like this: there's a frozen yogurt shop next to the grocery store, and every now and then when I have a spare dollar or two I stop in. One of the girls that works there was having a bad day and two high school kids came in that, apparently in the past, have caused trouble for her. They'd repeatedly sample all of the flavors rather than buying, and one of them has even stolen from her tip jar I guess. She was having a rough time trying to get them to leave, and security for the shopping center was on lunch and not responding, so I stepped in and offered to buy them each a frozen yogurt. The worst of the two troublemakers refused, I think because he was embarrassed, but the other was actually quite humbled and surprised and took me up on it. I found out that he's the last troublesome of the two and is mostly a good kid who just has a bad friend that's a bad influence on him. The end result was that they left, the girl working there was grateful and no police or security ended up having to be involved. They haven't come back and caused any trouble since then, either.
So anyway, that was the girl in line behind me at the grocery store. A very fortuitous bit of timing, that. It's always nice when karma comes back around to you.
On a much more troubling note, a girl that I went to high school with and was very close friends with in my senior year found me on Facebook and sent me a rather long message about how she'd always remembered me and a bit about where she is now on what she's doing. As touched as I was, I found a lot of the things in her info quite disturbing and found myself quite torn as a result. She had always been very religious, but was always what I had considered to be one of the best examples of a Christian that I'd known. She was always very kind and generous, very much about love and acceptance and charity. She never threw the bible at you or shoved her religion down your throat. Needless to say, when I saw her love of all things Tea Party and hatred of all things Obama, I found myself very upset.
She told me that she had read about how much I'd been struggling, as I basically pasted my diary here on to my Facebook wall, and how much respect she had for me. There were so many things I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her how so much of what she associates herself with now is responsible for the position I'm in and the suffering of so many other disabled people. I wanted to vent, I wanted to lash out, I wanted to ask her where the hell the awesome, wonderful friend that I had all those years ago went.
But I couldn't.
I'm not sure if it's because I've long since learned it's pointless to argue with most people, and nothing is ever accomplished by arguing on the Internet, or if I was just too shell-shocked at the time, but I ended up sending a very polite but terse reply thanking her for her kind words and wishing her the best. I don't know, maybe it was obvious that I was being rather terse and vague after she sent such a long and detailed letter, and maybe I came off like a jerk for doing so. I still don't know if I did the right thing. I feel like someone that, at one point in time, was a very important part of my life had been replaced by a body snatcher. I think I didn't get into it with her because I really don't know what she's been through, what might have shaped her into who she is now.
I guess I've just become all too aware of how much growing up sucks. I've avoided finding most of my old high school classmates for reasons like this, along with the fact that so many of them didn't treat me very well for obvious reasons. High school was a rough time for me. I know that sounds cliche, but take all of your average teenage angst and add it on top of being in a wheelchair (or deaf, or blind, etc.) and it's a whole other level of suck.
Anyway, I needed to get that out of my system. I still don't know what I'm going to do going forward, but I'll figure it out. On the bright side, my project at Kickstarter is off to a great start, I'm about to finish up a couple of commissions, and then I have more episodes to write. I also have an interview up if anyone's interested in reading it. It's only been one day so far, but it's been a step in the right direction.
29 more days to go. I think it's going to be okay. It has to be. I won't take no for an answer.