No Rest For The Wicked.....

When I first had my accident I thought I had merely sprained my ankle. Then the ER doctor came in and told me that  I had not only broken my leg, but had managed to do a fine job of breaking it in two places.

He was starting to give me the technical rundown - which bone it was and where it was broken and what that meant and whether or not I would need surgery...  

And I was listening.

I really was.

But I must have had some kind of disapproving look on my face because he stopped mid sentence and said "Are you about to tell me you're really busy? Too busy to have a broken leg?"

And I said "Yes, I most certainly am!"

He probably hears this a lot from people. I mean, who isn't insanely busy these days?

But, in my case, it isn't just my regular job and wife and mom schedule. For 5 months I've been working on the Kenosha Festival of Cartooning. 

Because the festival is my brainchild, the responsibility for getting everything set up falls primarily on me.

I have help from my husband and a couple of other folks I worked with on last year's festival but all the scheduling of the events, all the hiring of speakers, all the meetings with sponsors and hosting institutions and assemblage of press releases and organization of exhibits - yada, yada, yada....

That's the stuff that falls to me. 

And I learned last time that emails are no good for getting things going. Emails are good for tweaking details after you get the ball rolling, but face to face meetings areessential when it comes to getting sponsors and venues on board.

There's also the fundraising. Fundraising is a special little hell all its own. Especially in a bad economy and in a state that has become the poster child for government funding cutbacks. Cutbacks to things like Universities that host guest speakers. And cutbacks to public museums.....

It's not enough to plan a festival and find guests, you actually have to be able to paythe guests. And fly them in. And feed them. And put them up in a hotel that doesn't totally suck.

And all that stuff costs money.

We're not talking movie making budget money. But we're talking enough money that it's a little challenging to come up with. This broken leg has put me majorly behind in my ability to get to meetings and move things along.

And I was getting pretty worried. 

Until someone suggested Kickstarter.

It took a lot of work and I had to navigate through a minefield of links and legalese but I submitted the festival proposal to Kickstarter and - Hallelujah!! they approved it!!

I'm not ready to officially launch yet because I have to come up with a video pitch (which I stink at so Tom Racine is going to help) but look for the official launch of the project within the next 10 days.

Woot! I'm so excited! 

And I hope you are too!