Well, the pandemic has been tough on me.

When I started Hand Job, I had a decent salary job and did not flinch at the cost of funding an indoors event from my own pocket. When the pandemic hit, I took a pay rate cut and was reduced to part time hours. Since then, I have been personally spending a bit more than I make and floating it on my credit card. Because of this, I simply don’t have the cash to fund the event this year. I actually suspected this earlier in the year, but it is embarrassing and sad to admit. I ideally like to book the space in January, so I can have plenty of time to advertise for the November event, so as I got further and further past that date, I knew it would not happen.

At this point, I am waiting until pay day to pay my sister back $21, and my personal credit card is maxed out, so I really do mean it when I can’t even cover the basic cost of just renting the venue and hoping for the best, while skipping advertisements. To really do the event justice and justice for the vendors, I do need money for some advertisements. 

I have never done this event at a profit and it actually takes a lot of energy and strength to host the event, so I personally don’t have the resources to do it this year. I can’t afford to take a known loss even if I had the base cost covered. Somehow I feel like I am working more, between my part time job of 30 hours a week, my freelance design, and taking care of family/extended family members who seem to keep dying or nearly dying this year.

Hopefully next year is better. The irony is if I could just get to my previous pay rate, I’d have so much more wiggle room in my budget to chop down my credit card balance and stressing over funding this event would not even come across my mind.

I’ll see you all next year.

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