Friday 18 December 2015

Surviving vacations and making a crowdfunding campaign work

Today I have the end of the first week of my vacation in sight. It's been a harrowing week, with lots of managing, waiting and handling of orders. Today I finally got the last order in, however, and tomorrow I should be able to start copying data from my laptop onto this new system before turning it into my new main system.

I further had breakfast with a neighbour on Wednesday after she invited me, and also did groceries on Monday for this week. Those were the easy things, with my back today telling me that maybe I overdid it somewhat with the cleaning of my apartment and moving things around in the office as I made place for the new monitors and speaker stands. Hard physical labour which my pasty, nerdy and very scrawny body isn't used to, naturally.

Yesterday I also finally set up that crowdfunding campaign [1] I threatened with a while ago [2], so that when the bill comes in I maybe won't have to surrender much of my savings, or face jail time. Initially GoFundMe's automated system pulled my campaign due to the use of the word 'legal' in the description, but after a quick review by a staff member, the campaign was released again. As of writing this, 880 Euro of the 4,000 Euro goal has been reached already, which is pretty amazing after just one day.

Again, as I got some comments about this on Twitter yesterday, I am not asking for this money because it's an easy way out or something, or because I am trying to dodge responsibility. Over the past four years I have described many times what happened, that I cannot be blamed for any which happened and that both my psychotherapist and a whole range of judges agree with this notion.

That I still have to pay this large sum of money despite not being held responsible for my actions is simply due to a flaw in the Dutch justice system and the creative interpretation of the law which forbids exactly such a punishment. Finally there is also the issue of me not having many savings since starting 2013 with exactly zero Euros or any currency for that matter to my name.

I have sacrificed a lot the past decade and would prefer to draw the line here. I hope that others agree with this notion and don't mind tossing in a few bucks to lighten my load somewhat.

Of course this may seem somewhat odd when I proclaim proudly in the same post that I have just bought an amazing new computer system. This, much like buying thousands of Euros worth of furniture, was due to not having many possessions when I moved to Germany. For my hobbies, including some I would like to pursue a career in such as game development, I needed a proper system, not a 2013-era laptop performing at the limits of its capabilities.

At any rate I hope that it all makes some sense to someone out there at least. If there are any questions left after reading the crowdfunding campaign and the linked blog posts, feel free to ask them.


Maya


[1] https://www.gofundme.com/zufd2yh8
[2] http://mayaposch.blogspot.de/2015/11/how-not-being-punished-gets-one-into.html

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