Good morning. I wanted to let you know what’s going on with the fundraising push ahead of tomorrow’s departure date for the Traverse City trip.
Right now, barring any further setbacks, Aunt Annie and I are preparing as if we’re going up tomorrow. I went grocery shopping on Sunday, we’ve done some packing, and I pick up the rental car early this afternoon.
We’re still somewhat torn regarding the fact that we found out that we need to replace my 17-year-old Chrysler Pacifica on Friday, but we also understand that those of you who donated are paying for a service here, and that we would be letting you down by not going up.
The weekend’s been kind of weird, in both good and bad ways. We continue to receive both remarkable support and remarkable monetary donations from our hockey friends.
We’ve hit the fundraising goal on our GoFundMe, and we’ll be focusing on covering costs to stay in Traverse City and attempting to recoup our pay-the-bills-and-buy-food money, because we’ve exhausted our own reserves (what little we have) in order to get up to TC. The fact that we’ve already hit our goal is frickin’ unbelievable and really wonderful.
At the same time, my family remains steadfastly against the trip, both because we’re going to be no closer to affording a down payment on a car if we go, and because they’re worried about Aunt Annie’s safety. We’ve got a handicapped-accessible room waiting for us (that’s why the hotel is so darn expensive this time around), but doubts remain as to my ability to care for my aunt, and her ability to get around on her own.
That’s been really difficult to deal with.
You guys and gals and in-betweeners have been remarkably supportive throughout my blogging journey, and my aunt certainly believes that blogging is a good fit for a caregiver battling chronic illnesses of his own. But a good chunk of my family wants me to work at Target or somewhere similar, and they don’t take this job seriously at all, so we’ve really gotten it from all sides over the last three days.
And I’m not going to dismiss my family’s criticism of what we’re doing–and what I’m doing–out of hand. I understand that this job’s income fluctuates from month to month, just like my health, and neither of those facts are ideal.
But reality of the situation is that we’re always going to carry some self-doubt here, and that we’re always going to carry some concerns as to what we could have done with the $ if we chose to stay home, but I’ve made a promise to each and every one of you, and I want to deliver.
I continue to want to pursue this career path, and those of you who’ve supported me in one way or another have made it very clear that what I do matters to you.
So we move forward, uncertain of ourselves at times, but determined to do the right thing by The Mali Report’s readers.
If you still want to donate to the GoFundMe, that’s great, but we really need PayPal and Venmo donations right now, because that’s how we’re going to pay for expenses in Traverse City (in the form of “out food,” groceries and gasoline).
So we’re back to this particular paragraph again:
If you can lend a hand with our overall expenses, we have an old-fashioned GoFundMe here https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-george-annie-attend-prospect-tournament, you can use PayPal at https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport, Venmo at https://venmo.com/george-malik-2, Giftly by using my email, rtxg@yahoo.com, at https://www.giftly.com. And you can contact me via email if you want to send me a paper check. I’m also on Cash App under “georgeums.”
Thanks for your time, your readership and your support.
