Help a Freelancer Overcome Financial Crisis

This is a very difficult thing to write and I do so with a heavy heart. The basic fact is that I am not doing OK right now and it was suggested by my online community that I should turn to GoFundMe for help. Why?

Simply put, my freelance 3D animation business is struggling right now for a number of factors, not the least of which is the fact that I cannot find enough paying clients to sustain myself. I'm basically self-employed and things were looking great in 2020 and I was finally looking at a fulltime job with my main client who had just been funded by a much larger company.

And then Covid happened. I got laid off, the deal fell through, and the struggle began. I burned through all my savings since with a meager unemployment and Covid payments I could barely make ends meet. However a steady supply of clientele kept me afloat until recently. Even though I have several prospective client projects they're all looking for funding themselves and haven't been able to pay me so now I'm at the point where my credit cards are maxed out and my rent is due at the end of the month.

Additionally the cost of living is becoming almost prohibitive. I do have a safe place to live but my rent has gone up and I simply cannot afford to pay rent and pay the many bills that I have incurred over the past year of trying to survive. My car is literally sitting broken down in my driveway having emptied the contents of its oil pan all over the place due to the fact that I hit a set of those metal road construction panels exactly the right way to crack my oil pan and I didn’t notice until I parked.

I am aggressively putting out resumes and applying to as many animation jobs as I can but animation companies are letting go of their own artists and competition is fierce. And I won’t even talk about the fact that AI is putting my industry out of business right now.

So right now I’m putting up as much as I can for sale on eBay and Craigslist. That might net me a few hundred dollars but it's not enough to get by through the month of June so I'm turning to the online community for help and support (which if you know anything about me, is excruciatingly hard for me to do). I will say that I am someone who helps others in every way I can so please know that if you are able to help me at all now, no matter how little, I will pay it forward in every way I can to help others when I am able.

Thanks for reading.