Nothing is Easy

As March approaches, my fundraising campaign is delayed somewhat.  After working in fits and starts to put it together, I came across a snag two evenings ago.  It turns out that for a Kickstarter campaign, I (or anyone) can't use coupons as premiums for donors.  A few businesses gave me twenty five five-dollars-off coupons but unfortunately Kickstarter won't allow this.  Why? I'll let you go read those rules. This snafu however gives me perfect example of something that trips up the ADHD brain.  I may have early on read the list of rules for Kickstarter premiums, I may not have. I don't remember. Over the years when I tell people I made this or that mistake he or she will say some version of, "oh, no big deal. We all make mistakes."  But what they don't appreciate is the sheer volume of ego crushing, hope destroying, shame inducing mistakes that a person is capable of making over the years. At a certain point you find yourself mentally quivering in a corner, traumatized from this lack of trust in your brain, your memory and your ability to notice patterns and synthesize them, I could go on and on.  
         I didn't quite return to that very familiar corner two evenings ago.  I lost my steam, watched some TV but also read about Indiegogo and found that this may be a good fit for fundraising. I feel a bit behind schedule but I'm not a particularly worried about it.  March 1st felt like a good solid launch date for fundraising but now it will be a week or so later than this. 
At every level though, there are just more and more decisions to make. More areas to fuck up and go down that rabbit hole.

I'm back!!! Kinda

My apologies that I didn't write an essay last week.  I was laying in my bed whining about having a cold and watching movies. Luckily, depending on how you view it, I was most sick of Tuesday and Wednesday, my two days off from work.  Additionally, this cold morphed into something that inflamed my vocal chords so for the past three days I've sounded like a frog with a frog in its throat (who has a cold).

I digress!!

It's good to be back.  

Good news on the music festival front: I met with two local government officials this past Friday and though I approached the meeting with a moderately sickly feeling of vulnerability, it turns out that I had indeed prepared myself well for it.   How? In short, focused spurts I managed to figure out what I wanted to talk with them about.   Also, I went in knowing that my strength is simply conversing with people.  We talked for about twenty five minutes and I left with their support and blessing, so to speak.

Also, I will be interviewed by a local paper on Wednesday morning.  I'm pretty excited about that.  I get to expound upon on my excitement for the festival and how it came about. 

March is all about fundraising and this certainly augments the level of stress and vulnerability I feel in doing this whole endeavor.

Onwards...

A Day Late and $3000 Short

I was informed yesterday morning that my music festival did not win the $3000 grant for which it applied.  Some kids education project did. 

DAMN KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN!!  

Other than the mathematical fact that there was only $3000 to give away, the other reason the festival did not receive the money is the exact reason about which I wondered as I was writing up the grant: there there are already festivals going on throughout the year in this town.   

I have duly noted this observation and I answer back, "but it's not my awesome and unique festival!" My funding journey continues...

I stopped by just about all the business in town this week and got lots of good feedback; two have already donated goods to the project.  Speaking of that, I was NOT in the mood to do this.  At first I found this a heavy and unpleasant task to contemplate but as I moved from store to store and talked with people, my mood lightened and I became more at ease with being so.. well...public in advertising the festival and of fundraising.

More soon.  I'm in a writing mood. 

Thank you readers!!! 

Missing a Deadline - A course in Fundraising

No - please don't panic, this was an arbitrarily set deadline so no hair pulling and gnashing of teeth on my behalf.  The deadline did get me moving but Febuary 1st has come and gone.  I got over it and quickly deduced that doing the bulk of my fundraising from March 1st to March 31st actually makes more sense. 

I'll make this financial portion quick and painless - part of the fund raising efforts I will be doing for my May music festival, involves advertising my project through Kickstarter.com. There. done.

Since the main focus of this blog is my life and work through the lens of an ADHD brain, I'll say this here, I am perpetually amazed at how poor...shitty....crap ass...whatever you want to call it... my organizational abilities are.  This bit of age old knowledge on my part has been forefront on my mind this week as I've been reading through these Kickstarter project guidelines.  They're not complicated but every task feels to me like an endless rabbit hole.  

As I stretched and moved in yoga yesterday and felt pretty down, it finally dawned on me that this is one of those tasks (and by tasks I mean huge projects) where I need guidance, advice and most importantly: THE CREATIVITY THAT COMES FROM GROUP EFFORT.  SO, I sent out an email to some key people.  Not until I started writing did I actually know what I was going to say (much like this essay this evening).   I avoided writing, "PLEASE HELP ME!!" but rather gently and clearly requested an hour to an hour and a half of people's time to talk about our little town and what kind of fundraising may work best.  I managed to get two enthusiastic responses and one, "I'll try to be there,"  from the six people I emailed. 

So we'll see.  Folks will be coming by my place tomorrow.  Now to get organized for that...