Precious little light in a darkening sky.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

It's going to be a hard day, week, month to come. No sales; no time; precious little light in a darkening sky. But the need doesn't end, and the weight just gets heavier, and I am depressed and discouraged and disheartened now. A lot of it is lack of sleep last night; a lot of it, too, is this deadly thing that keeps bedeviling me, now three and a half years of it. A lot of it is knowing that I will never enough time to catch up, and learning once again, just last night, that all my own efforts are continually erased to credit someone else. And so I wept again last night; and then got up this morning to try all over again. Whatever else, I never actually give up. Stupid and pointless maybe, but it's not in me to do otherwise.

The amount of mutual aid we'd shared by this time last year is nothing compared with what we've had to shell out just in the last couple of weeks alone. It's been . . . A LOT. But as I said about that being why we do what we do, especially now in these days of pandemic, it's become abundantly clear that too often, there IS NO tomorrow, and the only chance you might have to help someone stay alive is TODAY. Things are bad locally; no economy, nothing. No vaccines for most folks dependent on the state system, either. We have lost SO much to 2020 (and already in 2021), so very, very many people, and the gifts and the talents and the knowledge and the wisdom they carried too often lost with them. People have needed so much more help than we could give them, but we did as much as we could, even when it put us in a bind, and we will need to do much more of that this year. We have shelled out close to 2 grand over the last 2 weeks of January, including $600 three weeks ago to fill the propane tank, which I was not expecting; close to a grand two weekends ago for the firewood; and my Patreon remains $300 short again for the second month running. We had to help a family with heat two Sundays ago, and Wings's clan brother a few days after with car rental for a week or two. There've been more since, and I have no doubt there will be more to come, and I have to make some sales to cover it all.

We have spent so much time on the kind of work that is utterly unrelated to income that I have got to be able to devote time to replacing all the outlay, and time is in short supply now. We've laid out between $1,100 and $1,200 cash in mutual aid in less than a week (actually it's up to 2 grand now) , and I have GOT to make it up somehow. My Patreon, which is all monthly our income these days, is wiped out and then some, I still have three monthly bills yet to pay, and one $65 sale in seven weeks is not going to cut it. Yes, I can juggle for now, but I've got to find it again somewhere. Part of my work involves me reorganizing the Web site and then promoting the hell out of everything again. That's on top of all the other work I need to do around here, and I have been mostly useless, largely due to the recent flurry of episodes with my health. For every episode, it takes me multiple days to recover, all while hoping that another one doesn't set me back even further. That's not good. Too many people need help, and the government remains determined to see us die. There's work to do. I've got to make it up somewhere. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (copper/metal/glass cleaners on it are needed most);
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And if you've been contemplating a purchase? This would be a very, very good time to do it; I've got to make it this staggering outlay somehow. There's even new work, here and here and now here, among other new pieces from 2 weeks ago, too, so please watch for them and share the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.