If you have the time, I'd appreciate giving this news post your attention. If you don't, please at least read the last paragraph.

I moved from the UK to the west coast of the US in the summer of 2007 and, through sheer luck, almost immediately landed a job at The Walt Disney Company. In January 2009, after almost a year and a half of handling the purchasing for Disney ABC's broadcast and Post Production departments, the company let me go and part of their "Holy Crap, The Economy Is Melting!" cost-cutting measures.

Since then I have been unable to find work. I've been slowly eating into my savings now for the last few months and I'm probably less than a couple of weeks away from completely running out of money. As a green-card carrying legal alien I am unable to claim any kind of unemployment benefit, and that means that once I run out of money, that's it. I'm done. I have nothing, and no way of climbing out of the hole I've fallen into. I wouldn't even be going to PAX this year if I hadn't already pre-paid for most of it.

This has been on the horizon for a while now, and while I have been furiously applying for every damned job I can possibly get to no one seems remotely interested in hiring me. I'm now in a position where I'm having to do something I hoped I would never have to do - actively ask you, our wonderful readers, to make a donation and help keep me afloat, even if it's only for a month or two. I've had friends suggest to me for some time that I do this but there's something thoroughly unpleasant to me about extending my arm to my readers, cup in hand, begging for money.

Unfortunately I've no alternative right now. It's this or nothing.

Jump Leads regularly pulls in between 1,500 and 5,000 unique page views a day. If just half of you could donate one dollar I'd have enough money to keep myself afloat for a couple of weeks, and that's two weeks that might make all the difference. So here's a donation button:

Anyone who donates gets access to the Jump Leads desktop wallpaper depository, which features some wallpapers we've never made available before including a wallpaper of our old "Temporal Junction Point" tee-shirt.

Additionally, I'm available for writing commissions. As if Jump Leads wasn't enough you have my Ficly account and my writing portfolio to draw other examples from. If you're interested in ahving me work on a project as a writer please drop an email to me [at] benpaddon [dot] com.

I want to stress that I'm not demanding money, and I never will. Jump Leads has been and always will be free to read here on our website. But if you're able to donate anything to help keep me going, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm still actively seeking employment and I have an occasional job in North Hollywood but it's day-by-day and I can often go weeks without getting a phone call.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I appreciate it, and I hope you continue to enjoy the comic.