Donating to Those Needier

I have been in Austin for over four years now. I wish I could love it, but for most of this time I've been without work, and when I have managed to get hired, it's so far beneath my experience level it's depressing.

After seventeen years working at Texas A&M in a variety of fields - from graphic design to IT support to server admin to database development and database server admin - I have yet to find those jobs. If I do, I rarely get the interview, and those very few for which I have, there's always a "better candidate" that's selected.

I had to sell my car, my laptop, my iPod, my Palm, my TiVo, my DVD player, and my TV. All my CDs and DVDs and books are gone as well.

I started a job last week, but it won't pay me near what I'm worth.

But this isn't about that at all.

My second night in Austin - with quite a bit of money after cashing in my retirement account with the state - I attended a fundraiser for AIDS Services of Austin. A friend had told me about it just hours before it began.

I found myself putting $1 and $5 bills in the baskets during and after each performer. When the emcee announced that Rainbow Cattle Company had made a sizable donation, as had an anonymous donor, I knew I had to do the same. It's one reason I moved from College Station to Austin - for the opportunity to help those for whom HIV/AIDS had been far more devastating than it had been for me (after a little over seventeen years).

If I had known that two years later I'd be needing the services I had come here to support, and that every penny I gave was money that could have helped me stand on my own a bit longer, I'd still give.

I can't be selfish. I won't be selfish, despite many friends writing me off as insane for putting others before myself.

Money I make from selling AIDS awareness designs on my Cafepress shops does not go to me. I purchase art pieces from my other online stores to be donated to silent auctions. Again, I can't justify making money off a cause as important as this. I've lost my cousin, a good friend and my first partner to this disease. I'm still here so I can continue to fight for all who have died, all who are sick, and those yet to come.

I recently donated an art piece of mine to the Octopus Club's ArtErotica fundraiser for the Paul Kirbey Emergency Fund at AIDS Services of Austin. I had donated two art pieces last year, so felt it was a good event to support.

Imagine my excitement when my work sold at a high bid that was $70 over the value! I won't get that money, of course. It goes to the cause.

So, while I continue to scrape up every last thing of value to sell in order to survive - and trust me, the barrel is pretty much empty now - I will still refuse to return to the selfish man I used to be.

Give a little, give a lot. Give until it hurts. Help raise awareness, help to educate, help fight the stigma of this disease, and just as importantly, help those who are living with HIV/AIDS.

It's not just in Africa: it's everywhere. It's in America, in Texas, in Travis County, in Austin. it's in your neighborhood whether you know it or not.