We've had a series of unfortunate, unexpected events hit us these past several months, including a robbery, a car accident, & losing our vehicle & home. We could use help to get us through this month while we move into a new home & have to buy a new vehicle.
As many of you may know, my bandmate & I moved to TN this year. & overall, this is a move we are really glad we made, & has been a tremendous blessing in many ways.
But unfortunately, we have also been facing a lot of battles in that process that we were just not expecting.
I have the full explanation of our situation written below, for those who want to know exactly what has been happening. I apologize ahead of time for its length. At the bottom is updates on the situation:
For context, the reason for us doing our band is specifically to help lift others up; to hopefully challenge people to think & learn & improve the areas that they are able to. We try to be honest & open in our lyrics, to show that we have the same types of questions & struggles & lessons that anyone else would have, & to hopefully help encourage others to be honest too.
We work a lot (at this point, primarily) with non-profits, especially when doing shows & touring.
On top of that, a lot of people know I do costume commissions & cosplay work. What not as many people know is that the reason I decided to pursue that as part of my career was because of seeing how many people joined that culture looking for a way to have community & to have a place they felt accepted in a world where they often didn't feel accepted in. It was something that had a lot to do with an overall goal I have in my life & something very personal to me in my heart, especially with things I’ve faced in my past. I wanted to be able to help with that for many of those looking for it, especially doing so using something I enjoyed & had common interest in.
These are important to me & will be things I do no matter how difficult doing so may be.
Both of these require traveling a lot, & flexible schedules, so we have set up our careers & incomes around that. Zac, my bandmate, primarily made his income musically in NY - teaching, doing sound, & being part of a musicians league that did weddings & things of that nature.
After moving, without having those things established here, he relied heavily on rideshare, which he had been able to do many times in the past.
We had gotten a place we both split financially as a kind of band home, as it was just financially the best route to go about it.
But shortly after making the move, things started going bad on his vehicle, one after another, until it got to a point of breaking down completely & he ended up needing to scrap it. While in the process of trying to get a new vehicle, things got last minute changed around where the new vehicle he already put in all the paperwork for ended up suddenly not being available until a couple weeks after the original date given. Between the car repairs & that, this left him with quite some weeks of not being able to bring in much income.
Around when this was happening, someone had broken into our apartment & had stolen my camera equipment, which I used for all of my careers, as well as something I often used as a side stream of income.
On top of that happening, NY started suddenly making problems with Zac’s license because of problems with their own disorganization, & had suspended his license, which because of their disorganized system, he was not able to get through to contact them to fix it. This then left a long process of trying to transfer his license to a TN license so he could drive again.
For some of the time, he was able to temporarily get a job with Amazon, however we had previously committed to a non-profit tour we've done for many years in the fall. This tour, both nationally & internationally, travels going into various communities to serve & encourage & bring them together using bands that have messages that align with that type of vision; many times going to safe houses & youth centers & things like that. Which they put on these shows for free for these communities. Zac couldn't get the time off to go while still keeping the job, so he had to end it for us to do the tour.
At this point, with all of these unexpected events that happened, we were bringing in & keeping much less than we originally had been expecting & planning on, so we were barely getting by & falling quite a bit behind financially.
Zac however, right before going on tour, successfully had gotten his license switched over, so we figured after we got back off from tour we could both just work extra hard for a bit & catch back up, since he was able to make much more doing the rideshare, & for me, October is usually my busiest months doing costume work, which was when we would be getting back.
& then, of course, someone hit Zac's vehicle while we were on tour crossing between states. We were very fortunate that we didn't get hurt, & none of our gear was damaged, but we then had to go through a long process of being sent in circles with the insurance & the company who was supposed to do the repair, being told different information each time, & parts coming in broken somehow & having to reorder them, & the vehicle going weeks without the repair getting done, meaning again, he couldn't work doing rideshare. So instead of being able to catch up after the tour, we instead fell heavily more behind, including on Zac's car payment, which led to the company he bought his car from, without notice, repossessing his car in the middle of the night mid October.
The next day after the repo, Zac was actually able to get a job at a uhaul location walking distance from where we live, however at significantly less pay per hour & only part time hours. Between what I made & that, it helped us pay some of our bills & groceries in the past month, but has not been at all able to allow us to catch up, but instead caused us to now fall behind in rent.
We were able to come to a deal with the management of our apartment where we could either pay what we're behind in & continue to stay until our lease is up, or they would allow us to break the lease & move out by the 21st of this month (November).
There had been previous attempts at trying to get us out, & when we talked to a previous neighbor, they had been doing this to several people because of wanting to raise rent prices much higher (the average rent price in our city has been skyrocketing this year). We knew they were going to already try to hike up the rent at the end of our lease in 2 months, so we were already planning on having to find another place by then anyway. However, without being able to pay what we're behind on now, we'll need to be out this weekend, instead of having those couple months to find a place.
We have things set up for if we need to leave. Some people in our church have incredibly kindly made offers for places for us to temporarily stay while we look for a new place, & we have a storage place we'll be able to keep our stuff at in the meantime. But if we're able to stay for the next couple months to more properly look for another place, that would be much easier.
Zac is owed a tax return that would be about the amount we need, & we were hoping that would finally come through, but unfortunately, he has still yet to receive it.
A friend on twitter had a spare vehicle that he lets friends borrow, & he has allowed us to borrow the vehicle in the time being. Zac also got connected with someone through his job who gets vehicles cheap at auctions & offered to help him get a good deal on a vehicle, so that is something we’ll be trying to do.
This friend on twitter also got us connected to someone with a concierge business which looks like Zac will be starting soon, & Zac also got to speak with a manager at a Guitar Center here that is very interested in hiring him because of his past experience in the music store business & music in general.
On top of that, for my birthday, another very dear friend bought me a camera replacing the one that was stolen. I still have a few smaller pieces of gear I need to replace, but the larger, more important parts have at least been replaced to have for my work again.
On the less positive end though, my laptop that I do all of my work on now has also stopped working properly; the screen completely doesn’t work. The only way I have been able to use it has been through connecting it via hdmi to an external screen. This has massively slowed down work & is now something else I need to put money toward in order to repair it.
I'm not sure why so many things seemed to have to go wrong one after another, but we feel secure in having things set up for the next few months where we should be fine, it's just a matter of catching up for this month.
Another lovely friend on Twitter suggested doing a crowdfund campaign. I should've honestly taken the suggestion & posted this days ago, but I was really up in the air about doing this. I am not the type to like asking for help, & I was hoping some other way would come up. But it seems we haven’t had any other options come up, so I figured I'd try, despite how close it is. Although like I said, we are prepared if it doesn't work.
If we do end up not getting enough in time, anything raised will instead go toward getting a new place instead. & anything beyond that toward getting a new vehicle & replacing the last little bit of gear I had stolen & fixing my laptop.
We will post all updates on here, & I'm trying my best to be as transparent as I can with the situation. Anyone is welcome to ask any questions. Anything given will be so extremely appreciated. This feels awkward to do, but I'm going to try this route & see how it goes anyway.
& for those who read all the way through, thank you for reading our massively long description.
Some major updates:
- Zac had locked in the job at Guitar Center & has now already started working there.
- A friend bought me a new laptop, so while I do plan on eventually trying to get my other laptop fixed, it is no longer a priority & I am set in that area.
- Thanks to another friend (the one that let us borrow his vehicle),
we were set up with one of his friends who owns a house that she is
willing to rent out to us at the budget we had per month. We got to
look at it last Sunday & it leaves us plenty room to do the work
we need to do. She is prorating it & we have just enough for
rent, deposit, moving truck, etc, between what we raised so far
& what we've made through work to move in on the 20th. But
we will owe another $1200 beginning of January, & we
will need to buy a fridge (we're looking at used currently), &
Zac still needs to get a new vehicle. So all funds raised will be
going toward those.
The new home is right by our friends from the tour we do, so we're looking forward to being near very dear friends.
Thank you to all who have helped & contributed in whatever way you have so far. It means so much & has genuinely been a tremendous help to us. I really can not thank you enough.
Links
Personal: https://linktr.ee/ShortStuffTiff
