I’ve put off writing this for a while, mostly because I would much rather be on the other side of it — the person chipping in, not the person asking. But we’ve fallen behind on rent, and at this point housing for me, my wife, our bird Angus (who remains blissfully unaware of all this) and our cat Mikasa is at real risk.

I’m currently between roles, and it has turned out to be a decidedly bad time to be looking for work in Canada. Another round of US tariffs landed in August, our retaliatory tariffs followed in September, and the labour market has softened accordingly — 68300 jobs were lost in September , another 4,700 in October, and unemployment now sits at 6.7%, its highest since April. Tech, as far as I can tell, has had it worse than most; after years of layoffs, there are simply far more experienced people than open roles.

I haven’t been idle, for what it’s worth. I’ve sent 250 applications in the last three months, made it to three final-round interviews in that same stretch, and kept busy with a Rust side project (more on that below.) I’m fairly confident I’ll land somewhere — this is about keeping us housed until I do, so that I never have to ask for this again.

All told, we’re asking for $10,000 CAD. That covers (1) $5,240 to clear our rent arrears and (2) $2,250 for next month’s rent, with the remaining $2,510 going toward rent beyond that until I’m working again. I’m sorry to be asking for as much as I am — every dollar past the first $7,490 simply buys us more time.

If you’re hiring, or know someone who is, here’s the short version. I’m a backend-leaning software engineer with over a decade of experience, based in the GTA. Most of my work has been in systems programming, low-latency services and JVM-based development, with plenty of full-stack web work along the way. These days I write a lot of Rust (github.com/birdbree). If you’re in a position to pass along a role or put in an internal referral, I’d be greatly appreciative, and I’m happy to send along my résumé.

In the meantime, I’ve been building ewsim, a sandbox RPG in Rust and Bevy where the player is just one resident of an island full of simulated towns, families and relationships — none of them scripted. The NPCs plan their days with my own derivative of goal-oriented action planning (GOAP), which sits atop a simulation kernel built around meters and weights. The whole thing is designed for 2,000–5,000 NPCs at once, each with a level of simulation detail that scales up or down on the fly depending on what it is (a person or an animal), how old it is and how much it currently matters. There’s no global tick, either — fire, water and plant growth are event-driven processes that run in parallel, each on its own schedule.

The world itself is a chunked, fully modifiable tile grid with 64 configurable elevation levels, and slopes are real terrain rather than decoration, which is to say a ramp tile actually changes movement cost and line of sight. NPCs build their own structures from templates, a piece at a time (roofs included, by way of temporary ladders to the level above.) The client, meanwhile, is deliberately dumb — it applies state deltas from the server and interpolates between them, and that’s it. The code isn’t public yet, but I’m happy to walk anyone interested through it, and I write about the design and development as I go on my blog if you’d like to follow along.

Thank you so much for reading this far. Whether you’re able to contribute, reshare this or pass along a lead, I really appreciate it — and it is my fervent hope that next time, I’ll be the one chipping in.

Thanks again, Bree (and Nicole, Angus and Mikasa)