Please help me pay my rent and veterinary bills

Okay, I'm swallowing my pride and asking for your help. My name is Colleen; those of you who know me know just how hard it is for me to ask for help from anyone. I'm pretty scrappy and have always been able to take care of myself, no matter what life threw at me. But eighteen months of unemployment and several unexpected veterinary bills are wearing on my optimism, gang.

I lost my job in January of 2023 and have been actively looking for work ever since. 500+ job applications and a handful of interviews later, I'm still looking for full-time work.

Thanks to a friend, I landed a remote freelance position late last year for several months at a great tech start-up; that job helped pay the rent for a while. I've been lucky enough to find a part-time job working a couple of shifts a week at a wonderful local bookstore, which brings in just about enough to pay for cat food and litter for Mugsy, Chai, and Shadow, and to make sure I can pay for for Mugsy's insulin. (Look at those furry faces!)

However, the freelance position ended last month, right about the time I had two very expensive back-to-back emergency veterinary visits for my cats Mugsy and Chai. August rent is due, I just paid $2k in taxes on the unemployment benefits I collected last year (Oh, the irony!), and I'm tapped out financially.

Despite all that, I'm staying optimistic and hoping that this is just a glitch in the Matrix but I do need your help. I need enough to get through the next few months and give me breathing room. I also have some medical issues I need to address — as a cancer survivor, there are certain tests that I just can't afford to ignore anymore.

What I'd really like is a full-time job, either fully remote or on-site/hybrid here in the Seattle area. If you have any leads or contacts, please send them my way or send them to my LinkedIn profile. But until then, if you can spare a few bucks, I'd genuinely appreciate it. If you can't (which I totally get - everyone I know is struggling right now), please consider sharing this fundraiser with your network. If I'm lucky enough to find a job soon, I'll donate whatever money I don't use to The Trevor Project.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate all of you!