Once again, the old Skeptical Raptor is depressed and fighting hard, but needs your help for funding.
For those of you who don’t know me, I am getting on in years, and I have come to realize that I focused on my career and lifestyle rather than the things that should matter most to most people’s lives — their families.
For me, it should have been my three special daughters. They are now all adults, and I missed watching them grow up. It is time for me to be a part of their lives, as I live in California and they live on the East Coast, far away from me. They have all grown up without me because I chose a career and lifestyle over them, and now I don’t have the career or lifestyle, and I don’t have them.
Because of personal medical and spectacular financial disasters, I am stuck in California, far away from my daughters, and all of us know that the only way to be family again is if I am physically close to them. I need them since they are my only family.
I had a terrible emotional breakdown while running a startup company. I put all of my money into it, thinking that just one more dollar would get it going. I failed, which pushed me into a major depressive disorder, making it difficult to survive from day to day. I think writing this blog has been one thing that keeps my head from imploding. And no, I do not think writing a blog “cures” depression, it just helps me focus.
Speaking of this blog, despite my ongoing travesties and missteps, this website was going to be my income stream to get me close to them. For about a year it worked, but Google changed its SEO algorithms, and the old Skeptical Raptor got clobbered. Many of my articles that were in the top 5 of the Google rankings are now <100. This destroyed my income stream from this website. I’ve tried everything to recover, and nothing works. I have to rebuild it as if I started it yesterday rather than being over 10 years old.
And in case you don’t know, writing articles, managing the back end of this website, and answering comments and questions is nearly a full-time job. There are other writers out there who just can type out 2000 words in an hour — I don’t have that skill set. I have to read the articles, write out some bullet points, then write the article. It’s difficult and stressful.
Then other things happened to me. My car is an ongoing mess. If I had the money, I’d dump it in a junkyard and move on. But it’s important to my survival. My MacBook Pro, where I do 90% of my work is on its last breaths. The battery is gone, and it constantly crashes from what I think is a bad SSD card (or bad motherboard, which is worse). It’s four years old, just about the limit of life for a laptop. Without it, I won’t be able to write articles. I don’t even know what I’ll do if it finally dies.
So, I’m asking for your help so that I can be in my daughters’ lives and make sure I keep writing. Even if I get out there, it’s going to be difficult, but it’s the first step. I have limited years left in my life, and if I don’t do this now, I never will be in their lives.
I know that my story is no better or worse than anyone else’s, but I am really stuck. And I could use your help.
So, there are three ways you can help me.
The first way costs you no money, other than buying something on Amazon. Just click on the image/link and buy whatever suits your fancy.
The second way is Patreon:
All you have to do is go to my Patreon Page and my latest posts from here will appear there as if they were magic, without any advertising.
And the final way is on my GoFundMe page:
I thank you for your support.
