In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic began. In that year and in 2021, my life got turned upside-down. In September ’21, I went to stay with my father. That lasted four months and then I came back to Ohio. I was keeping myself going with some help from my daughter’s father for most of a year, and his help ended at the end of December ’22. And then I lost my extended-stay suite the day after my birthday in January ’23. And then at the end of January I found out my car needed a relatively inexpensive but important (to its continued ability to move) repair. This coincided with International Failed Weight Loss Month, and I had been primarily supporting myself with food-delivery driving. Perfect storm.
I cast about looking for help and even started a GoFundMe but in the end what it took was a state trooper chatting with me at one of the rest areas where I’d been sleeping overnight for the past month. One thing led to another and now a veteran services office in the county north of Columbus is working on setting me back on my feet. It’s amazing how one word, in this case “honorable,” can change your whole life. That was the official nature of my discharge from the Army. Hence I am eligible for whatever veteran services fit my particular situation.
I’m not out of the woods yet and I’m not even 100% sure where this will go. At this point I have shelter and am lining up at least an estimate for exactly what on earth is wrong with my car. If he says the same thing the Firestone shop said, I’ll know we’re on the right track. If he doesn’t, well, the veteran services guy I talk with trusts him, so I’ll probably still go with whatever he says and hope for the best.
One of the things they’re likely to do, though I’m not going to cite a 100% chance yet (that’s like jinxing yourself), is set me up with an apartment. They’re not going to pay like the whole year or anything, but potentially we could be looking at them paying the deposit. I’m also seeking out help with job-hunting, though I have a few ideas on the short list now that Delaware is not too far away from me. So the goals at present are: fix the car, get a place, get a job.
But I’m never again putting my eggs in one basket because that was just foolish. I’m branching out.
Basically, if you’re looking for anything along the lines of what I’ll be listing below, if you could have a look here first to see if I’ve got something that meets your needs, I’d appreciate it. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, kind of thing.
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BigStock Photo portfolio: This has been stagnant a long time, but I’m hoping that as matters in my life improve, I can start messing about with photography again. I mean, I’m a shutterbug anyway, but I don’t go very far into it anymore because I had to sell my DSLR to keep my room last year and my current phone camera is the pits. I understand that with proper skills we can work around some camera limitations, but that only goes so far. Still, I’ll see what else I can dig up in the meantime, probably, so if it’s too sparse for you right now, check back occasionally.
Born With Ovaries: My Substack about women’s issues. I go back and forth between wanting to claim to be a feminist and preferring to leave it alone, and it’s not because I don’t like the concept of feminism or the word itself. It’s because I don’t want to be a hypocrite. But women have issues peculiar to our sex class whether we call the addressing of those issues “feminism” or not. And yes, I’ll talk about the gender thing, because I am tired of us not having a voice in the mainstream. Not that Substack is mainstream. But… you never know. It could evolve in that direction. Meanwhile, I have set this up so that if you want to comment, you have to be a paid subscriber. It’s $5 a month or $50 a year. Just reading is free.
Chime is a financial services app affiliated with Bancorp Bank, though the app itself is not a bank, and you can tell because they let you withdraw from your savings account more than six times a month. I love it. If you’ve been curious, that link is a referral link for you to sign up, and each of us gets $100 if you fall under certain parameters with your account activity. Well, go look. There’s more info at the link.
eBay: My seller page. I usually don’t have anything there, but I’ll probably announce it on the blog when I do list something.
studio random: If I get artsy for sale, it goes here in some way. I tend to favor portrait-drawing and fan art, but I’d like to explore all sorts of stuff. We’ll see how that goes.
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If you just want to help a bit, I have a PayPal.me. I hate PayPal, and one day I’ll close my account, but it’s there for now.
I don’t have Venmo or CashApp or kofi. I have a Chime sign (see above), which is $Dana-Seilhan and which you can use to send me SpotMe boosters at the beginning of each month — which is not sending me money at all, but is still a tremendous help. I think you can send money that way too, but I haven’t tried that yet so I don’t know how it works. I assume that if you’re planning on doing it, you do know how it works. Either way.
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I’m only asking about or for any of this because I went through all this crap because I left stones unturned. So this is me turning over the rest of the stones I happen to be aware of. If nothing comes of it, well, I won’t be any worse off than I was already. If something does, it’s a little bit of breathing room. That’s all.
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Last updated: 18 February 2023