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Help me be NOT poor.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Homed.

In college, one of my friends dated a girl named Toria. Toria had a friend named Laura, and Laura could have a bit of a prickly demeanor. There was an epic argument that stemmed from a comment I made to my friend about a pic. I meant no harm, but my friend's girlfriend's prickly friend's protective instincts kicked in and she let loose with a barrage of insults, including this one:

"You should get a cat, so you'd at least have one friend."

A couple years later, I was down and out, staying with my parents in their poor person apartment. It was a bitter cold winter in 2010. One day, I was getting something out of my car, and this cat appeared:

She then jumped in my open car door:

It was pretty cold and I think, more than anything, she was trying to warm up. This cat was homeless. I wasn't doing much better, living with my poor parents. Eventually, my mom held the door open for way too long while bringing in groceries, and walla... we have a cat.

Eventually, my mom pretended the cat was my idea and the responsibility fell on me to look after her.

She's been staying with a friend since June, when I became homeless.  I miss her.

The good news is I got an apartment!  The less good news is that it isn't ready to move in until 11/3.

I'm still about $600 short of my goal over at gofundme.com/samvance 

While I did get the apartment, I still need money for apartment supplies, food, and costs associated with getting all of my things to Columbus from Cincinnati.

I can't wait to move into my apartment, even though it's nerve wrecking because it was supposed to be 11/1, but got pushed back...

And I miss my cat.


The apartment ad:




Thursday, October 15, 2015

No Goal.

The following was posted as an update to my GoFundMe campaign:

I've learned some interesting and hard truths about humanity after I started this GoFundMe campaign.

If you profess yourself as homeless and in need of help, many people won't believe you.

This is similar to the responses I've gotten to Poor Blog by people I call, 'bootstrappers' - those who find something, anything wrong  that you've done and use that as an excuse to place the full blame on you; typically resulting in the clichéd call to pull yourself up by your boot straps.

It boils down to a lack of empathy. I'd like to think this cold hearted reaction is something of a defense mechanism. If everybody who is poor or homeless, is poor or homeless because of their own actions, then you don't have to worry about becoming poor or homeless, in part, because of circumstances beyond your control.

Worse than not believing me, is people ignoring me altogether.

This is the largest response to my campaign, which is nothing... literally.

Don't get me wrong, I have had some donors, who I appreciate immensely. When the GoFundMe  campaign launched, I was quickly on pace to reach my goal in less than 2 days, but it quickly died.  I have received many RT's, my retweet reach has been in the hundreds of thousands, yet the donations slowed to a trickle.

The retweets I get now are from just a couple people, who themselves are ostracized from their peers - so the impact of those RT's is pretty low.

I have learned that for some, political issues trumps the well being of people they would claim to care about.  The people that picked up my homeless tweets are anti #GMO. For the record, I support #GMO, but I was in no position to turn down help, especially since I have resorted to what the bootstrappers call 'online begging'.

What I noticed was that the dedication of the much maligned anti-GMO tweeters far outpaced that of my own friends on the  GMO side.  Part of the reason is that the anti-GMO tweeter's RT's weren't seen by the  GMO tweeters who already blocked them.

But that doesn't really explain it. I tweeted plenty about being homeless & will often tag my tweets with #GMO... and no response.  

I'm $1,070 short of my goal. The reason I need to raise this money is that my job pays just enough to cover rent, but not the deposit, cost of turning on utilities, food and sundry items for the apartment, and costs associated with getting my things(and cat) from Cincinnati up to Columbus.

The longer I have to wait to save up the money, the less likely I am to find an affordable apartment.

What I need from you is 1. money.., not gonna lie and 2. promotion.  I need people who don't follow me to see my homeless tweets or your tweet about my homelessness with the GoFundMe link.  To get 10 donors, I need thousands of tweets/shares/etc.

Please help.

gofundme.com/samvance

p.s.

You can still donate to my PayPal by using the link on my Twitter profile.