Arriving at the meeting at 6:13, carrying $95 of Thai food he just paid cash for, Ahimsa Boy is greeted by a dour “6:15, my ass.”

“6:14,” Ahimsa Boy notes, “and yes, your ass.”

On his way to the meeting, about fundraising, specifically crowdfunding, he is asked about something he didn’t put on the agenda and then challenged: If you haven’t sought to become a Vendor for the NYC DOE yet, what are we funding if the business is so limited?  Never mind the exhaustive list of things we need to fund to make the business viable and sustainable that he has sent out twice in preparation for the meeting.

At the meeting Ahimsa Boy is told not be be a control freak, to give others autonomy and let them be creative.  He mildly points out that this is his fondest wish, it’s just that he has been doing 99% of all the work, since there is nobody to relinquish control to.

After showing the first draft of a very short eye-catching animation appetizer, intended to catch the attention of people with a ten second internet attention span, he’s told:  not enough kids, bad advertisement, doesn’t give a sense of what the program does, won’t make people want to give money, needs a watermark with the website in the corner of every frame so people know how to contact you.   Then when he explains that none of those things are the purpose of this quick blur of color and invention, he is told to stop being defensive and censoring people.

“There are a thousand reasons the thing won’t work, all we need is the one reason that it will” he holds up signs saying this.

This is interpreted, in real time, as a not subtle invitation to drink a big, cold beaker of “shut the fuck up” and he is told as much.

“So you don’t want us to give our honest opinions, you just want us to tell you everything you’re doing is great.”

A rhetorical question, Ahimsa Boy assumes, then takes a breath and tries to give a gentle answer.

But I’ll tell you something, the strain of being Ahimsa Boy without a net, doing all the heavy lifting and smiling at people who mostly give the minimum, if they show up at all, and want credit for being your biggest supporters, with the right to tell you constructively how much most of what you’re doing misses the mark: priceless.