Hey everyone,
It's been a while, hope you're doing well. It's that time again to update you all on what I've been up to and things I'm currently working on, both career wise and in my personal life. I will attempt to fill you in on my plans as much as possible and the best of my ability. There's going to be a lot to unpack and will be explaining in great depth on why I launched a Go Fund Me campaign, with what I'm hoping to achieve with it and goals I'm working towards.
Updates: What's New? Where I've Been & Reflecting On This Year
Where do I begin? Oh where, oh where do I begin?
This year has been absolutely wild, especially with new experiences and self discovery. This comes in addition to new lessons learned and my personal growth journey. This came with new faces, trying new things, and a lot of eye openers. It also lead me to go back to my roots and really open myself up to look deeper, viewing things in a new way. This crazy roller coaster also opened my eyes up to view things in a whole new way and have a fresh perspective, including stripping it all down and going back to the basics of approaching things in a whole completely different way entirely. With tasks, new projects, and exploring new venture was no different. This all meant to me to challenge myself and step out of my comfort zone entirely as a whole, which can seem scary and intimidating at first glance. Sometimes you just have to take the daring leap of faith and just go for it. I never back away from a good challenge. I'm not scared of failing, in fact failing helps you learn about yourself. Helps you learn about what's for you, what isn't. It teaches you to be sensible and within your means.
"Even if we lose, it doesn't make you losers, we learn as much from failure as we did from success! " - George Cooper, Big Bang Theory/ Young Sheldon
There were a lot of moments that tested me this year. My kindness, patience, willingness to learn and grow, thought processes.. all of it. The major take away from it is, if you have an idea that you want to come to life and want to succeed.. You must be willing to work hard, put your all into it, and zero in on it. You must be willing to branch out and step out of your comfort zone, even if it seems like murky waters. You need to be dedicated and willing to learn. You have to be open minded and willing to expand, taking any experience that comes your way good or bad and take it as a learning opportunity in addition to how resourceful you can be. Whether that is reaching out to people and asking questions or researching all of your options before you make a set in stone executive plan of action. Overall, have your ducks in a row and don't be afraid to make connections because those connections will mean so much more later on down the road and having knowledge of where to gather resources.
Tarot Readings & Discovering DNA Ties to One of My Best Friends
As you all know, I started doing tarot readings for others September of 2023. Realistically speaking, I've been doing tarot for ten years, but just on myself. Last year, something spiritually clicked in me and internally I said to myself that I could do this to help other people. I've always been in tune with spirituality and the spirit body world. I've been in tune with the paranormal and have always been sensitive to energy shifts, that sort of thing. To be frank, for the whole year I've been giving readings to people I have absolutely enjoyed it and within that time I've help someone unite with their soulmate while also giving them insights about their future and names of children that is in their not so distant future. Which I'll make a separate article about for those that are curious. This person is someone I've known for years and have recently discovered that they're my cousin, when we did some digging and found out we shared a great great grandparent. I know right? Haha, small world!! The world may know her as the one, the only, Cemetery Goth. What started that rabbit hole is her last name sounded familiar and she was talking about discoveries in her ancestry family tree. The universe and something written in the stars that was poking at us both to do a deep dive into this. At one point, she listed off a few names and I was like hey that sounds familiar. I further explained those were people on my grandmother's side of my family, which is my dad's mother. What sealed the deal even more was being showed photos and I remember saying, oh my freaking god.. my dad has some of those exact same photos in a dusty photo album in his footlocker. What made it more damning, is there was a photo of my dad when he was an infant with his uncle standing next to him outside the family home and what did you know.. she also found that exact photo on her family tree. That's in addition to seeing familiar faces of my grandma's cousins and relatives in photos. We were so shocked, mind blown, and thrilled overall. It's no wonder why we clicked in the first place and why we get along so well, that familiar family tie. It's mind boggling to think about and fully wrap your mind around it to fully grasp. I know, I couldn't believe it either, but I'm glad and thoroughly overjoyed. I'm glad we looked into it a bit more. Makes one feel more connected. Just wild. Just absolutely wild to me.
New Projects, Twitch, Discord, and Merch Store In Progress
Recently, I've slowly started to delve back into creating music again and contemplating ideas for new content to make. So maybe some new videos soon, I hope. Been tossing ideas back and forth new ideas for what the new videos could be about. I'm also looking into a better camera setup for vlogs and filming, so been shopping around to find something good. Don't want anything too expensive or overly fancy, just want something to get the job done with decent quality and is easy to operate.
Twitch and Working Out the Bugs
Last weekend, some of you noticed a Twitch livestream notification from me. I've made the decision that I'm going to be doing streams again on Twitch. With that entails testing everything, working out any bugs, or software discrepancies between my computer and internet. Mainly the stream last weekend was a test stream to work out any issues with audio and sound, and check equipment. We made sure everything was updated and had the latest version installed. The main and only issue I've run into now is video playback, buffering, and dropped frames with streamlabs. Either the video is sticking, delayed, freezing, very grainy, or not showing at all. I've adjusted my framerate and playback settings, still no avail. Or my controller becomes laggy when the video playback lags and randomly disconnects itself, both controller and window capture. Which is a bit frustrating as you can imagine. Hopefully, we can get those issues worked out and start streaming again. I've missed streaming and hanging out, chatting with everyone. It gets lonely at times and I reminisce on all the fun times we've had hanging out on Hootfiend's channel on Twitch. We'd laugh, cry, chill, vibe to music for hours at a time. I've thoroughly missed that so much. Hopefully, back up and running soon.
Discord
Additionally with Twitch comes elaborating on the changes regarding my Discord server. Some of you may've noticed major changes to my server and some things rearranged, simplified. It may look more user friendly and easier to navigate. Before I rearranged it, it looked like a chaotic mess and the server channels looked mismatched. Some we're redundant repeats of other channels. I had to take a long, hard look at myself in the mirror and like geez.. How the heck do I expect others to easily navigate my server if I'm confused and having a difficult time navigating it myself? So what I did was a major cleanup. I got rid of channels nobody was using. I combined certain channels of the same nature to be all in one. This eliminated several redundant channels of the same subject topic to one refined channel tab and made things less confusing. I updated the server map to reflect the changes and described each sub channel with description of the channels and what was merged or moved over. I reviewed the server rules and welcome page, had a thorough glance. What I did add was a plugin from the official Fallout 76 game sever from Bethesda Softworks to bring a bit of liveliness to the server and to keep up with what's new with the game, since I know a lot of you play the Fallout games too. I felt that was a worthy addition to bring to the server. I hope you've been enjoying it so far.
Merch Store Collaboration Soon Will Be Launching
In the past two months, Cemetery Goth and I have joined forces. For a long while we've entertained the idea of doing a collaborative project. We weren't quite sure of what we wanted to do, so for a while brainstormed and contemplated on what we could do. Then a couple months back we had our aha moment and decided on doing a joint merchandise store for our channels, and it spawned from fans expressing their desire on how cool it would be to have a t-shirt, mugs, beanies, and stickers with our logos and unique designs on them. We thought, hey that's a great idea!
For the last couple of months we did endless hours of research, coming up with a business plan, and looking into what we would need. Then did a rough draft on store policies, mission statements, brand story, and promotions on top of a loyalty program. Then followed a rough estimate of starting prices for our merchandise that would be advertised to our customers. We quickly came up with a name to call our store and brand, Cemetery and Bats. We brainstormed on what merchandise we could sell and etching out design concepts on Canva. We then had to find the best service to host our digital storefront and plan options, as well as securing a permanent domain and looking into checkout host options for customers who visit our storefront.
As of right now, we're looking into suppliers to help manufacture our products and estimates of supply costs. We're equally looking into equipment and supplies to make our products ourselves, and how to effectively and efficiently produce supply without bankrupting ourselves in the process. Which we're teetering around the idea of crowdsourcing the startup funds needed to get started. Meanwhile, we're coming up with additional designs for sticker pack bundles and buttons. We're also starting the process of getting graphic poster art prints made and business cards. Both of us agreed that once we're more steady and have found our footing further along, we'll introduce more things and promotional items, with also collaborating with others by introducing an affiliate program and helping small alternative businesses grow. To say we're excited, that's a major understatement. Cemetery and I, we're both over the moon and thrilled for this to take flight.
What I'm Up To Now + A Change of Scenery + A Fresh Start + Planning to Move Abroad
You're probably wondering why the title mentions moving abroad and GoFund Me. Well, I'll try to simplify it in the best way I can. Ever since I was little, I always dreamt about living in another country and moving abroad. It's been not only a lifelong dream, but also a lifelong goal of mine. Always wanted to move to either Canada or the UK/UK Commonwealth nations. Became even more of a goal to relocate in hopes of better job and career advancement opportunities that I can't find here in the sleepy Ozark Mountains. I feel I'd have a better chance of succeeding outside of the USA and having a fairer chance of obtaining what I need/want to do. And this is in hopes of better and safer living conditions for myself and my cats, especially as of late with all of the chaos happening since the start of this month and it increasing the fear for my safety. The only problem is having the funds to leave the USA and comfortably move, start a new life elsewhere. Currently, I only do gig work with delivering groceries for Walmart and that doesn't always pay the best. Recently, haven't been able to do much of that since the app has been down a lot more that it has working and being online. I'm without work currently and my last job was working retail at Guitar Center, and I got absolutely overwhelmed pretty quickly. That with my severe anxiety were fighting each other and didn't mix well, so I dropped out of that which is why I started delivering groceries for people. It's more slow paced and you get to pick the hours, but as said the app has been down a lot and is starting to become unfeasible. And recently I've felt that I'm so much more than that and don't want to be stuck doing that for the rest of my time on Earth. I've had no luck with job searching and some won't even take the time to give me a chance. At this point, I'm leaning more towards Canada around the Manitoba sector.
But, what about your Patreon? I've not made any money off of it in a couple years now. Whenever I had my major fallout with that ex band mate, I found myself in an utterly profound bout of burnout and depression. I fully seized up with anxiety paralysis and it completely brought creating to a sudden screeching halt. I didn't create anything new for nearly a year and a half, only would go back to being creative in small bursts and it was right back to burnout. Within that time, my supporter on Patreon dwindled and I can't say I blame them from backing down supporting someone who started creating and goes to scarcely creating or uploading either. Which I have no hard feelings on. I completely understand. It is what it is. I was constantly tired and exhausted all of time, and within that time I faced challenges with my health. I was constantly sick a lot, like back to back. And within that time, two of my childhood cats Smoky and Homer crossed the rainbow bridge which I was understandably not myself for a long while. It took a long time before I started to feel like myself again, but to be frank I struggled quite a bit and especially since I had a lot going on in my personal life with cutting ties with people who were toxic or would constantly bring me down. I had to distance myself from anything negative that didn't benefit my highest good and ditch unhealthy, self destructive habits. I took time to really dig deep and soul search, which taught me the importance of having healthy boundaries and not letting anyone have the chance to disrespect me or walk all over me. It taught me about self respect and what I will or won't put up with. Taught me what I will or won't deal with. What I allow in my circle and what I won't allow in my circle. It taught me a lot about myself and what I can or cannot tolerate. It really opened my eyes significantly. Which all of this also contributed to not being able to find substantial or steady employment.
This is where my donation campaign comes in. It'll not only help me cover passport costs, but also moving costs. It'll help me get a work visa and residence permit. It'll help me get started on Canada's Express Entry program. It will also help me find a single family home to live in and my belongings transported, moved it. It will also help with cost of utilities being setup and turned on. It's going to help with getting my cats up to date with their vaccines and get their pet passports, and transported as well as other expenses including getting myself there.
I'm hoping to move and have enough funds to comfortably settle, maybe get permitted to work at a record shop or video game shop since that's right up my ally. I might actually have a better chance at finding other musicians to start a new band and put out music again. I may have a better chance a finding love. Just full on better opportunities in general and overall, somewhere I don't have to constantly look over my shoulder. For obvious reasons I can't actually put that in the campaign description, because it'll get taken down for that reason and others that have put that little information bit they've had theirs taken down due to censorship stemming from recent events. It's time for new scenery and a new start. It's time to break old cycles and generational curses. It's time for ditching the old and starting new, new beginnings.
If you want to donate and are able to contribute, I'll include the donation campaign link at the bottom of this page. IF you can't donate, no worries! If you want to help and can't donate right now, you can still contribute by sharing the campaign link. Every bit counts and will help me out a great deal, which will go toward a happier and safer life.
So far, I've filled out the passport application online with their auto filling feature and got it printed out. I've not signed it yet, because you're supposed to wait until you are at your passport appointment. I've got a rough calculation of fees, which will be $276.36 total. The first bit will be for the US Department of State via check or money order which totals to $241.36. Then the $35.00 acceptance facility fee which can be paid cash, card, check. I'm currently saving up for that. I still have to get my passport photo done and photocopy all of my important documents.
Once I get my passport, I'll need to apply for a visa to Canada and go from there. At that point, the rest will follow suit. I'd also like to point out, I'm actively looking for hosts and sponsors to potentially make the transition a lot easier. This is for serious takers only!!
Moving Forward
Honestly, I'm excited and nervous. I'm also scared, but hopeful. This will be my first time moving and living outside of USA. This is the first time I'm moving out of my home state of Missouri and moving quite a long ways from home, and where I grew up. This is a big and scary, but exciting step for me. I don't know what to expect, but I'm open to be humbled every chance I get with each new experience. I dread leaving everything I know behind, but I know it's for the best and for my own good. It'll be a good challenge nevertheless and will be a push to see how resourceful I can be.
Final Notes
Who knows what'll happen and where this goes? Whatever the case it ends up being, I hope things will end up okay. I will try to be transparent and keep in touch, update when I can. A busy time is ahead of me.
Thank you for staying with me all this time, I appreciate all of the love and support over the years!
-Love,
Becky <3
