A bit of bad news.

So, while I knew this could happen, I assumed it would happen sometime in the future, not now. Those of you who follow my tumblr or have for a long time may know that I have been struggling with computer issues for a long time. Most of them have not been serious, but involve internal components of a laptop that's nearly six years old, a laptop that I use to do all of my work on. 

Well last night my GPU decided it had lived long enough and died, to the point where there's no power going to it, nor does my bios or any other part of my computer recognize that it's even there. Now, it's not overwhelmingly crippling as it's only one part of a switchable gpu setup, but it is the more powerful of the two, and that means that things like rendering audio files suddenly becomes much more difficult, and at the moment I am trying to figure out how badly this will damage my files. After all, if I can't render at all, then I can't make files, and if the renders are poor, then I wouldn't be happy putting them out. 

So at the moment I'm kind of stuck, with no idea how much it'll cost to get a new one. Again, it's somewhere between a 5-6 year old laptop, and in addition to a failing sound card ( which I thought might kill it about six months ago ) and a battery that is failing to the point where the bios can't complete a check of it, I'm sort of unsure of what I'm going to do. Or be able to do. 

Honestly, I hate the idea of asking for money. Ideally, if the entire thing doesn't collapse utterly, I could make files that would be able to make up the difference. I've had a few people message me and ask why my maximum pledge is only $10, and that's entirely because I feel sort of bad taking people's money? I want to be sure that what I'm making is worth what people pay for. And honestly, I just don't know what else to provide that would be worth more? 

I know there are people out there that would help if I asked, but I have no idea how to set that kind of thing up. I mean, today is the 14th, and even if I set it up for Patreon where I did have a higher tier even if I could figure out what to offer for it, I wouldn't receive anything for another 16 days. And I don't know what might happen during that time. 

Should I set up a paypal? I'd preferably not do that to people, because all of you already give so much and you have no idea how much it means to me for people to help support me like this. Really, it means the world to me. 

I'm sort of feeling stuck I guess. I don't want to ask for money, but I also need a computer that can render files so I can produce content so you all get your money's worth. 

I'm open to suggestions and ideas from all of you, as well as feedback on what you think would be an acceptable way to raise money and the like. I don't want to take advantage of anyone's kindness nor make anyone feel like they are being taken advantage of. At the moment, I'm just sort of panicking because I'm not sure how to deal with this sudden problem. 

Again, I want to hear from all of you, to know what you all think, to know what you would be/wouldn't be willing to do, to know what you'd all be willing to/unwilling to help with. Regardless, I'm going to try and find some way, any way, to get this up and running, but I'm honestly afraid that as I delve deeper, at any time the entire thing might just collapse on me. When one part goes, one begins to wonder how many will follow, or when. 

Anyway, forgive me for rambling. I'm sorry if this sounds a bit pathetic or pandering; I'm just in a bit of a bad place at the moment mentally and otherwise. That said, as my supporters, I believe you all deserve to know what's going on and what's on my mind; I don't want anyone to think that I'm just cutting out the people who allow me to do this for a living in the first place. 

Edit: Okay, so I've managed to get things to render. It just takes longer, but the good news is I can render things. That said, I don't know if at any moment it'll start to crash given that I'm basically running with half of what I normally do and it's not meant to run this way. 

That said, I am tempted to make a hypnotic file that would 'brainwash' the listener into supporting me/making a tribute for me managing to get a new pc, in order that anyone who DID want to help, would feel rewarded for doing so, and such a thing would be entirely on here, so I suppose it would be a private video just for supporters. Would that be of interest to anyone?