Urgent Financial Help Needed

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So, yesterday, I basically shuttered my Second Life store in order to, pretty much immediately stop paying Linden Labs any money whatsoever in order to have land, and access to group space needed for both hosting my store in-world, and maintaining groups for promotion. As of right now, my little venture in Second Life is pretty much over.

But, that does save me some money.

Here’s why:

I took my car in for inspection, and was informed that part of the steering column needs to be replaced (the u-joint shaft), or it can’t pass inspection. Since I’m still paying on this car to Carvana and the loan they gave me in order to have it, and I need this car in order to go to and from work, I can’t really say “No.” I’ve already had to drop 900 USD, and in a week or so when I go back, and they have the part delivered, I’ll have to pay 800 or so more in order to finish it. This is non-negotiable, and must be done. And this will happen, before I even get paid anything more from my job. I’m running on the fumes of money I’ve been trying to save in order to stay on my own two feet.

In the interest of full transparency, like I mentioned on my semi-dormant Tumblr account, I’ve cancelled most of my frivolous subscriptions. That includes Netflix, Youtube, frivolous storage for my Pokemon, my personal Minecraft server I was using for members of my Discord, and space on Google Drive. The only things I’m paying for now, outside of credit card debt from the last time I had to pay some company thousands of dollars, are hosting for my Mastodon instance, and my Proton mail (plus redirects and custom domains). Obviously these are two things I want to keep, and would like to not get rid of.

Here are some links, for various ways that you can help out, directly:

Bandcamp: Eyeshadow 2600 FM and PLEXX :: I make music, and have made music since 2017. I’m currently working on my next album under PLEXX, and will likely release this sometime soon in the near future.

Patreon: Link :: I’ve been running this Patreon since 2013, spanning things I’ve written in rough drafts for books, member music release downloads, my (now shuttered) Second Life store (since it began), and, more recently, financial backing for my Mastodon instance, for anyone who wants to support it.

Ko-fi: Link :: I recently setup a Ko-fi as an alternative to Patreon, for basically the same reasons, but it hadn’t and hasn’t really taken off as a place where people would rather be. But, it’s an option!

Gofundme: Link :: I recently setup a Gofundme in order to field finding financial help for the debt I’m already in from having to pay vets for medical reasons, and then the cremation of my older cat. Those are bills I’ve been paying for over two years now.

Paypal: Link :: This is my Paypal.me, although I was informed by their customer service that they’ve discontinued the .me pages for business accounts (I’m only a business account because at one time I was accepting payments for my music directly on Paypal), so I’m not even sure if this works.

That’s it! Obviously, the books I’ve written over a decade ago could be another avenue, but payments for books purchased are paid out once a month, at the end of every month (and I don’t really even make any book sales). It’s too bad I haven’t even remotely come close to finishing the current book I’m working on.

Who I am:

Years back I started transition, what some would call in out-of-date terminology, male to female, a trans woman. I experienced some … really not great treatment in my job at the time, and was pretty much forced out of it. This was kind of a shock to me, and looking back, I feel like this is where a lot of my anxiety comes from. I would say I exhibit some amounts of PTSD, but I’ve never had the financial security in order to be able to visit a therapist. Resulting from discrimination, harassment, I isolated myself at home for five years. During that time, many online would definitely know me by the name of Meryl S. Kavanagh, wherein I began a Second Life store in an attempt to replace my income. And then, in 2017, I started making music in another attempt to do the same thing (after patching things up with my family, I eventually returned to using my original, birth name).

Despite having some success, and even a bestselling album, I garnered more harassment, more hate, and more discrimination from those within the Twitter synthwave community (there is evidence of this posted on Instagram, but I don’t believe this is the place I want to share it).

This is around the time I made a full-stop on my transition, and returned to the offline workforce. I don’t consider this a detransition, and I don’t consider myself to have exited the LGBTQ+ community. I still have questions about my gender identity, and even if I eventually found out that maybe I’m fine the way I am now, I’m also not straight, if that matters. But, that is also a very well kept secret from most people in my offline life, and it’s on a need-to-know basis.

I share these things, again, in the interest of full transparency. In order to convey, to you, the reader, that I’m not just some random person who came out of nowhere asking for help.

I changed my online handle from merylsk to cmdr_nova in 2020, and for a time, in 2022, delved into making an NFT project with my own two hands. Drawn on an iPad. This got featured by the main pre-Musk Twitter account, and despite losing some friends during my admittedly mistake of a choice to participate in this fad, I made some money. Enough to buy new glasses, a new phone, and get myself into a new car … the same car that is in need of nearly 2000 dollars in repairs. And none of that NFT money is left, it has been years since then.

Today, I’m still making music (as evidenced above), I’m still writing books, and although I’ve shuttered my Second Life store, I also run a Mastodon instance that is open to any, and safe for LGBTQ+ individuals as well. I do not plan to close my Mastodon instance. If there is anything I’ll fight to keep, it’s the ability to run my own space on the fediverse, free from admins who might ban me on a whim (which has happened, at least five times) for unserious, bad reasons.

That’s my entire story, shared in as small of a byte of text as I can possibly muster. If you’ve valued the work I’ve done, the writing I’ve done, the music I’ve done, and everything else, please consider offering a helping hand as I empty what I have in order to just keep my car.

Thank you.