# SteemFest, Injury, Blockpress and fund raising

SteemFest

It has been longer than I would have liked between now and my last post. I have been going through a rough time lately. I wanted to write more about the fantastic experience of attending SteemFest² in Lisbon, and the varied and wonderful people I met there. However, shortly after we returned my mother died of cancer. I haven't even looked through all the photos I took of peoples name tags to remind myself of who I connected with.

Last photo of me with both parents

Even now I find it hard to talk about her death and my bereavement. In fact it made it hard for me to talk about anything. My way of coping with the first couple of months was to shut myself off from the world and knuckle down on development of the BlockPress project. This is partly why most of my posts during this time were Utopian posts with updates of my progress. I found it easier to write and post about this because I could focus my words on my
recent activity and not my emotional state.

Injury

You may also have noticed that I haven't posted even BlockPress updates over the past few weeks. And I'm so close to making the initial beta release, taking the project out of alpha. Well I injured myself in such a way that is has made it difficult to spend time at the computer for more than short bursts before needing a lie down.

_Wait! My face looks different in this photo. Can't put my finger on it...

Whilst I haven't had a scan or x-ray of any kind, the doctors and physiotherapist think that it is probably broken cartilege in my knee. Which probably happened when I sprained myself slipping on ice. I don't really remember doing that, although I do remember slipping and catching my balance a few times. I guess one of those times it must have happened.

Leaving the UK

Anyway, @dana-varahi and I plan to leave the UK. Scotland has been a wonderful experience and in many ways we will miss this place. On the other hand we see moving on as an adventure and look forward to what we will gain. My job here is temporary anyway, and there is no guarantee I will be able to stay in the same city, even if we chose to remain in the UK.

Brexit has caused problems and issues for us, as a mixed nation UK-EU marriage. We either have the choice of staying the UK, with Dana experiencing an errosion of rights and resulting lack of employment opportunities, or we can move to the EU, where my rights as the spouse of an EU citizen will be honoured.

The second option is much more attractive of course, but it is not without cost. We will have to let go of our furniture, our dvd collection, our cd collection, most of my book collection and many of our possessions. Even moving a small amount of boxes will be expensive, as will other aspects of managing the logistics of the move, such as travel for interviews, choosing accomodation, paying rent deposits, etc.

Fundraising

At the moment we are short of our total, but we hope to save and raise the money by the summer. I hope that by some time in the summer I will be in a possition to confidently apply for work, knowing the money to move has been secured.

How do we plan to raise this money? Well, a number of means:

• Any SBD rewards raised by myself or Dana from steem and utopian posts will be cashed out between now and then rather than powered up. We will do the same with any donations of STEEM and SBD recieved.
• If we are short of our total by the summer, we will power down until we have reached our goal.
• We have offers on a lot of our furniture and belongings from friends, and when these transactions are completed, we will add funds raised in this way to the totals.
• We have a gofundme campaign page, and in addition to accepting direct donations, I will also be launching some limited edition perks, including rare books and other things of interest.
• I will be blogging about the campaign, our preparations to move, learning a new language and culture, the things we are giving away, donating to charity or have sold to friends, and hopefully tell our story in an interesting enough way to attract upvotes from steemians, and direct donations on the gofundme from non-blockchain friends.
• Once the beta of BlockPress is released, I will consider accepting commissions for custom content modules, possibly for other blockchains. For example, I am considering starting a Worker on @bitshares to create a bitshares content module.
• Talking of bitshares, direct donations to @antonchanning23 in any crypto are of course most welcome.
• Savings. Any money we are able to save from each months budget will be added to the total.