Familiar with Uncertainty
In the past week family, friends, and even my accountant have reached out to see how the ongoing pandemic is hitting us financially. Family and friends wanted to see if we needed help. The accountant wanted to be sure that I knew about all the assistance options available from the federal stimulus bill and from Utah legislation as well. The short answer to everyone is that we are doing fine and don’t need any help right now. The longer answer is that our future is very uncertain, but we’re used to living with our financial picture being uncertain a few months out.
We live from Kickstarter to Kickstarter. That is when our income arrives and then I have to make it last until we can run the next Kickstarter. Right now we’re late on delivering the Kickstarter we ran last November, and since we have a personal rule of not running a new one until we’ve delivered on the prior one, there is a giant question mark over when the next large income event will happen. There is an even larger question mark about whether our fans will have any money to spend when we do run it. An additional variable is that the daily Schlock Mercenary comic will be ending this summer and we have no idea how the lack of daily comic updates will impact Kickstarter participation. Right now we can’t qualify for government aid since we can’t prove income loss due to pandemic. (Also the last thing I need is for us to owe more money.) If there were a grant we qualified for, that would be different. As long as our tax return comes through, we’re okay for now. The future is uncertain, so we need to put in the work to manage our resources and deliver what we’ve promised our Kickstarter backers.