Life Stuff

Hi. I'm Jesse. I'm just about 40, and have been physically disabled for about 15 years, along with a learning disability I've had all my life. I'm a techie nerd, musician, photographer, gamer (and wannabe game developer), and make many attempts at entrepreneurship, but my life isn't really going anywhere at the moment, or for the foreseeable future, and so I'm stuck on disability, and basically in a rut.

About My Disabilities

My primary disability is a progressive, degenerative neromuscular disorder, basically like a mild and atypical form of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease). The particular form I have is so rare that it doesn't have a name. The effects are similar, a gradual neurological loss of function in my muscles, leading eventually to paralysis, but the particular form I have seems to primarily affect my hands, wrists, feet, and ankles, without affecting other parts of my body. This has impacted my eating, my work (having previously worked as a database programmer--I'm no longer capable of doing that because of my condition), my music performance, although I've found ways to adapt, my gaming. It also means it takes me a very long time to get going in the morning--about 2 hours to get up, shower, and get dressed. Aside from that, the condition also robs me of energy, so very often I'm not able to do much other than rest and play video games. Even creative work like making music or creating crowdfunding campaigns takes too much out of me

I've been working on many crowdfunding projects as a way of getting out of this situation, trying to raise funds for:

music gear

https://assets.gogetfunding.com/taking-this-show-on-the-ro...

photography gear

https://assets.gogetfunding.com/lens-fund-stage-i/

https://assets.gogetfunding.com/lens-fund-stage-ii/

fitness equipment, to help me get in better shape, get more active

https://life.indiegogo.com/fundraisers/fitness-for...

and an organization to help myself and other crowdfunders have a more successful campaign

https://assets.gogetfunding.com/metacrowd-crowdfunding-the...

I also have a Patreon account, for ongoing expenses and such.

https://www.patreon.com/nAbleMedia?ty=h

And I have photos available for licensing commercially on 500px

https://prime.500px.com/jcfawcett

and some music for sale through Bandcamp

https://neur0mancer.bandcamp.com/album/soundtrack-...

This crowdfunding campaign is a little different. This is more of an extension of my Patreon account, in that I'm trying to raise funds to help with ongoing living expenses--rent, groceries, web hosting and cloud services, entertainment, transportation (minimal), clothing, and other assorted expenses, so that I can save more, and be able to purchase other things I need, such as the music, photography, and fitness equipment that I'm also trying to crowdfund for. Essentially, what I'm doing with this campaign is using this crowdfunding platform as a sales platform for my creative work, and also making it easier for people who want to give general support, but in the form of one-time payments instead of monthly payments, or who are interested in a particular item.

Fundraising Goals

Ultimately, my goal would be to raise enough to get off disability completely, which would be around $2000 a month. But for now, my goal is to raise enough each month, on average, to cover:

Rent: $375 a month

Groceries: about $250 a month (I live in a rural area, and my shopping options are limited)

Web hosting and online services: about $30 a month (this includes some I pay annually, averaged out)

Entertainment (mostly video game-related): about $30 a month

Clothing: about $10 a month ($100-150 a year)

Housewares, consumables, adaptive equipment, misc: about $21 a month ($250 a year)

Adobe Creative Cloud (this would be an addition to my current expenses): US$600 per year