Patreon - the what, the why, and how to support Jara

Hey.

For over two weeks now, I've hosted an artist account on Patreon.  Patreon's like Kickstarter, but ongoing and monthly.  You can donate as little as a buck a month to support artists and receive special content and exclusive content before others do.

In these 14 days alone, I've posted:

Behind the scenes production photos
Diary Entries
Alternate tracks of previously recorded original songs
New poems
Little-known songs I've written
Sneak peek at scripts and excerpts of plays I've written
Easy, direct access to my You Tube song and poetry videos.

The site allows you to comment, provide feedback, post your own artwork, and share things together as a community,

So, why am I doing this?

Sure, it's a way to encourage more creative daily interaction.  But the heart of it is that I'm paralyzed with fear because my day job has issued some pretty tight fiscal cuts.  Got my first check after the changes last Friday and spent hours balancing my checkbook and making up a budget based on my monthly expenses.  And it's way worse than I thought. Due to my day job, due to increased medical expenses this year, and due to a lack of paid acting work so far this year, I'm short about $830 a month.

Yeah.

And this is with me living a pathetically spartan life.  Spending an average of 15 bucks a day on food.

So, I'm scared.

I'm hustling to find more acting work, part-time work. I've established this Patreon account.

www.patreon.com/jara

Don't know how long the center can hold.  Not sure what else I can strip away or do without.  Doing all I can to avoid more debt.

Realistically, I need to make $1000 more a month before taxes to break even, and $1500 more a month before taxes to actually start making inroads into my acting career.  But how?