Giving Back

I’ve talked a lot about gratitude in my posts over the years, I’ve noticed. Maybe because that’s when I feel inclined to write. After all, it wouldn’t be right to write about the times when I’m angry and frustrated and want to scream at the world. Rest assured, those times do exist. Like everyone else, I, too, want to scream when the world is burning.

And it is burning. Literally and metaphorically.

But gratitude. It’s an emotion we all too often overlook simply because greed, commercialism, capitalism, or whatever you want to call it, tells us that we shouldn’t be satisfied with what we have, that we should always be striving for something more.

But what if…we just didn’t.

Hear me out. I’m not saying not to strive for more in life. By all means, please do. Strive for more connections, more genuine interactions, more compassion, more empathy. Strive to get our children fed, clothed, loved, and educated. Strive for a job you love or a hobby you enjoy. But this obsession with having more than others, owning more than others, with showing off carefully curated images of what we want people to believe of our lives… Well, it’s brought us where we are.

And where we are is not a good place, my friends.

So when I launched a Kickstarter asking for…money, I didn’t really know what to expect. Especially during an active coup, while rights are being stripped from some of our most vulnerable community members and families are being torn apart for no reason other than to satisfy a wannabe king’s whims.

It wasn’t exactly the ideal time to ask for money to help me release a book into the world, but ask I did. Why? Because I had been planning this project for two full months, had the Kickstarter page designed, reward tiers created, themed-stickers drawn, a bonus scene written… You get what I’m saying. When so much preparation goes into a project, it’s hard to abandon it, even when you’re not sure it’s the right time to introduce it to the world.

When I hesitantly began crowing about the Slip Kickstarter two days ago, what happened was such an incredible outpouring of support, not just financially, but socially and emotionally as well. It was a breath of fresh air after weeks of feeling like I’ve been stuck in a cesspool. It was a lifeline I didn’t even know I needed.

In two and a half days, the project was fully funded. My social media posts had been shared dozens of times by friends I know and people I don’t. By folks who have known me since I was born and people I went to high school with. By writer friends who wanted to support me in my endeavors and by random connections from across the internet. Some of the sentiments they shared in their support were the kindest, most lovely words of encouragement I’ve ever known.

The fact that 60 people have already financially backed this project without a moment’s hesitation is mind-blowing. In a time where we’ve never been more uncertain about where our groceries will come from, how high our gas prices will go, whether we’ll have a planet to occupy in a century, and whether or not we’ll be around to see it, people still care about art. They still care about stories, adventure, love, and maybe most of all, hope.

And that’s where my gratitude is multiplied by a thousand. In a time when our future has never seemed more uncertain, there’s a community out there who wants connection. Because what is art for if not connecting people and ideas across different mediums, be it oil and canvas or the written word? And in a time when everything is so divisive, we’ve never needed that connection more.

So yes, I am grateful. So very grateful. And sometimes being grateful means paying it forward. I’ve done a lot of rambling in this post, and if you’re still with me, thanks for that. It’s been a long day.

Because I reached the Kickstarter goal in less than three days, I’m implementing a stretch goal of raising an additional $1,500 for the project. Not for me. Not for any new reward tiers. But because I want to get 150 copies of Slip into the hands of teen readers by donating to classrooms and school and community libraries. I can’t do it alone.

I’m hoping the enthusiasm and excitement will last for the next 27 days and we can keep raising funds to share Slip with the kids who need it most. So help an author out and give the Slip Kickstarter a share, would you?

I think it goes without saying, but…I’d be ever so grateful.