I need help to continue to live indoors until I start working and getting paid as a substitute teacher.
I don't think I could do well as a 57 year old homeless man with a permanent colostomy and six hernias. I would appreciate anything you can afford to give. Even if I only raise enough to keep the power on, it would help.
GoFundMe Link
PayPal Link
First, I will tell you my needs, how I will use the money, how I plan to get back to financial security, and finally I will talk about how I got into this situation.
My immediate needs include aquiring enough money to pay for my rent, phone, utilities, gas, and food for my two cats and one puppy for October and November. I will use the money to pay my rent, phone, internet, utilities, and any unexpected expenses (such as flat tire, etc).
This comes to approximately $2000 per month. Since GoFundMe takes a share, I've included that into my goal total.
I am on EBT (Food Stamps), so I have food, as long as I keep my meals cheap.
Delight Dog with my baby cat Apophis
My plan for financial recovery is this: I have just completed the process to be certified to be a substitute teacher and have begun to apply to local school districts. I have been told by local education officials that local school districts are in desperate need of substitute teachers, and the only qualified people who have trouble getting substitute assignments are those who overly picky, as in "I only want to teach the fourth grade on Friday afternoons at the school down the block from me". I'm willing to teach any grade on any schedule.
Delight with my older cat Anubis
However, the process of getting my applications processed takes time, and even if I begin working in the next week or two, I won't be paid for October until sometime in mid November, so I need enough to cover my various expenses mentioned above until then.
If you have any questions, you can contact me HERE .
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I want to talk briefly now about how I have been conserving money in the recent past:
I have turned the hot water down to the lowest setting, and have not taken a hot shower in more than a year. I rarely turn on the heat except on the coldest times, such as last January when the temperature inside the house one morning got to the mid 40s. I rarely go anywhere without a significat reason. Like the poster of WW2 used to say, "is this trip really necessary?". All the light bulbs have long ago been replaced with low-energy LED bulbs, and even those are off except the ones near me. I rarely eat out or buy fast food because the money spent on one hamburger can otherwise provide me with enough cheap food for several days depending on how I allocate my food purchases.
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How I got to this financial situation is a long story, and I'm going to leave a lot out to keep this from become even longer than it already is, but briefly it goes like this.
The Tumor that changed my life
In summary, after having cancer surgery with a permanent colostomy, and thinking I was going to die, I prepared for the end of my life, but I did not die Just as I recovered, my father went into a months-long coma he wasn't expected to recover from, but did, and I became his caretaker for the next fifteen years until he died recently. As a result of the colostomy surgery, I have at least six abdominal hernias. I now weight about 380 pounds (down from a max of about 600 pounds fifteen years ago). As a result, I can't safely lift more than about 20 pounds nor stand for long periods of time. I recently had a piece of my right foot removed due to a serious infection, and I'm only now getting to the point where I can walk and stand for extended periods. I have been having a lot of difficulty in finding work in spite of me having ten college degrees (1 BS, 9 Associates) due to my long stretch of recovery from my cancer and then years of caregiving to my late father.
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Now, I'll go into a bit more detail about my life over the past years, which you can read, or pass on for now.
In 1994, I was diagnosed with colon cancer a few weeks after my mother died of lung cancer. I had surgery to remove the tumor and as a result I have had a permanent colostomy for the past 22 years.
My initial diagnosis was 90% terminal, but due to new medical tech and chemotherapy, I survived when others with the same diagnosis from a few year earlier died. In the months after my diagnosis and surgery, I met another person with the same diagnosis as I, but from five years earlier, and he was in his final stages of life. He told me then, "people like you are going to live because people like me died", and he died a few months later. This has been one of the major mileposts of my biography.
Still, I did not KNOW I was going to live, and had every reason to think I was going to die within a few years. I spent the next few years preparing to die by writing what I could of my autobiography, taking pictures, and spending time with my father. My mother's recent death combined with the real fear of my own potential death caused me to cling to my father for what seemed like the end of my life.
After several years, it became apparent that the new medical technologies had saved my life and I was not going to die. It's now 22 years since that surgery.
I had been a materials engineering student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo before I was diagnosised, and was about 3/4 of the way through that program. I was focusing my studies on microgravity materials science, and if I had not gotten cancer, I would by now likely have a Ph.D. and have experiments flying on the space station. Cancer disrupted that path. I ended up changing majors and going to CSU Monterey Bay.
While at CSUMB, my father went into a coma following an infection after open-heart surgery. He wasn't expected to survive, but I refused to let his life support be turned off until it could be proved he was not going to survive. Again to make a long story short, he eventually awoke and although he came back mentally, physically he was never the same, and I became his caregiver for the next 15 years until he died in May 2015.
Dad out for physical therapy walk several years before he died
Following Dad's funeral, I began job hunting, but I had limited success. I worked on several short term jobs, and for awhile I worked on the graveyard shift of a local gas station where I was not allowed to sit down during my shift except on my lunch break. Due to my size, the long times standing likely contributed to my foot getting infected and requiring the partial amputation, and is a job to which my surgeon does not recommend I return to or I might lose more of that foot, leg, or my life.
I am very capable and willing to work. I have been having trouble getting a good job due to my long time without a regular pay-check job. Adding up the time I spent in University, recovering from cancer, and then caregiving for my father, I hadn't worked for a regular paycheck job for any long period in about 25 years. While I had an employment history in my young adulthood, including four years in the U. S. Coast Guard, this employment gap is part of why I've not been able to get employed. I have sent out about 200 resumes and applications since Dad died, and I suspect that the employment gap has been something that either has some person reject my resume, or a computer automatically rejects my applications.
I have ten college degrees, one BS and 9 associates degrees, so I am very qualified to do many jobs, but many employers seem to consider this a minus rather than a plus.
Add to this that I am a 57 year old 380 pound man. I have had several interviews where it was obvious from the first meeting that I was not going to get the job based on the look of disgust on the faces of the various interviewers.
I have been going through the testing (C-BEST) and certification process to become a substitute teacher, and have recently completed that process. I am now in the process of submitting applications to several local school districts. Being a substitute teacher is perhaps the one field where I'm virtually guaranteed having ten college degrees won't be looked at as some sort of oddly disqualifying factor. I'm hopeful to be working in the next couple of weeks somewhere, but even so, I won't get my first check until sometime in mid-November, and it won't be nearly enough to catch up on my behind rent, and my utilities and phone are likely to have been shut off by then. Not to mention not having money to feed the cats and the dog.
If you have read all that, thank you.
I very much appreciate any help you can provide, however little.
Thank you,
James Thomas Green
Monday, Oct 3, 2016 · 8:11:05 PM +00:00 · jtg
UPDATE October 3, 2016; 12:30 PDT.
I want to thank those who have already contributed. It’s enough to keep my power, phone, and internet going for this next month. I have until the 15th to raise enough for the rent, but this is only a few hours into this, so I’m hopeful.
As was suggested in the comments, here is my LinkedIn profile, to show I’m not a “Nigerian Prince”, I’m not. I’m a real person facing an ongoing crisis. I need help to get through the next couple of months until the substitute teaching takes off. I’ve put in several applications and I’m awaiting the initial processing and I hope to be working in a week or so.
I expected some flames for posting this, and I was right. I’ve discovered that some people who claimed to hold progressive ideals turn out to be more like Donald Trump when dealing with a situation that is not purely theoretical. I have discovered that people i thought were friends are not as they flame me for not “getting a job”, when that has been the focus of my life since Dad died.
This has been the worst time of my life. Before this, I considered the time after my mother died of cancer and my own diagnosis of cancer to be the worst time of my life, but then at least I had my father, now I have nothing. My remaining family has abandoned me as in my family, who are mostly Trump supporters, having money is the measure of, not just success, but of your intrinsic measure as a person. The loss of my father after 15 years of caregiving plus the years before when he was MY caregiver gave us a close, if rocky, bond. Depression has been the dark cloud over my life. I still wake up crying in the middle of the night, and such seemingly minor things as driving by his cemetery, or just walking past the frozen burritos he always wanted me to buy for him in the market can get me choked up.
I have been flamed elsewhere for “asking for too much help”. This is not the first time I’ve asked for help in the past year. Some of you may recall when my car’s engine caught fire and required over $1000 worth of repairs. I might have ended up homeless then but for your support. Then a few months ago, my dog Delight got Parvo, and required some expensive daily treatments. When the vet told me how much it would cost, she left me alone in the exam room holding my Delight, and knew I could not afford to treat her, when my phone beeped and I saw that I had raised enough to pay for initial treatment, and so now she is sitting on my lap as I type.
Trump Logic (Click to go to Patreon)
Also, I’ve begun making a web comic/meme which I call Random Reverberations from JTG. I’ve set up a Patreon for this ongoing project, but as of now, nobody has contributed there. One of my pieces I posted in this post, regarding homelessness. I was inspired to do this one both because I’m facing homelessness myself, and because I’m working on a project with others to do a project to interview and create video profiles of homeless in Salinas which I’m planning to post a Kickstarter on soon.
I understand how some can be skeptical of me and my claims. Scams and fraud happen. Is this “self-serving”? Yes, because it will help keep me living indoors. If somebody asks to donate to helping someone else, that’s OK, but if asking for help for oneself, that’s not, some might say.
Again I ask for your help.
James