Help Keep My Family and My Work Alive

Hi, My Name is Celia (well, legally it's still Taylor... that change costs money we clearly don't have). I'm a Transwoman and independent creative stuck here in the midwestern armpit that is Kansas. For the past 8 years, I've been supporting myself, My Wife, and our wonderful reptiles, as an independent creative consultant. I design and build children's museum exhibits, interactive donation stations for children's hospitals, donor walls for non-profits, not to mention weird things like playgrounds, escape rooms or interactive art exhibits for kids - I've even done board games and tabletop gaming content. Whatever weird ideas people bring me, it's my job to help make them a physical reality.

But since Covid, work has been few and far between. In October of 2022, hallmark, who had kept me on retainer to design and build parts of their free children's art space in Kansas City, dropped me with less than 24 hour's of notice, and I went from making about $1200 a week, to making maybe $200 a week. My wife is unemployable for a variety of health and other reasons we would rather keep private, and we burned through our savings by the end of that year, and any support from family a few months after that. since then we have been surviving off what little work I can find here and there, and the generosity of the internet.

back in 2020, I started work on an expensive NSFW rulebook for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition. and while the project was initially a hobby, the small amount of money I pull in through supporters on that each month has become much of the backbone of our survival, mixed in amongst the unpredictable work I can scrounge up from occasional clients. That community has literally kept us off the streets that past 2 years, and as a thank you to said community, I'm working desperately to take that project to the next level and get the book published in hardcover - that will be a separate crowdfunding campaign when it's ready.

For now though, We are just trying to survive. Here in June our Rent is going up to nearly $1000 a month, on top of utilities, car payments, and all of that. Plus more than 4k in backtaxes because all of federal tax law exists to punish those of us who don't work for one of a dozen megacorps that own the country. Point is, we need help. It's just me, My wife, and our three wonderful danger noodles, desperately trying to make ends meet here. And to pay forward whatever we are given by putting what good we can out into the world. Hell, my day job is designing things like playgrounds for children's cancer wards.

If you think any of what I do is worth supporting, well here I am. begging for money form the internet again. This initial goal is hopefully enough to cover our tax-debt, and just even us out some so we can try to make progress on climbing out of the pit we have been thrown in. Anything beyond that will go towards helping with our rent, and maybe even paying down credit card and medical debt, so we can someday get out of this hole. Any amount helps though. And I will continue to do everything I can to pay forward the kindness of others wherever I can!

And hey! if you have work that think might be in my wheelhouse, or want to see what I have been working on with the adult D&D handbook, just let me know! I will always prefer to work for my money! I'm sort of new to proper crowdfunding like this, so I don't really know how things work yet, or if there are ways I try and offer rewards or something. Shit is bad right now, so I'm setting this all up, and will fine-tune it later as I have time to learn more.