Thanks PinkandBlue for your encouragement and for sharing that you had a similar experience regarding job loss and being forced onto a different path.

At least it's a goal to work towards for me. The path I was on 7 years ago was thwarted by an academic chair of the dept., who hated my guts (she sabotaged myself and 4 other grad students' outcomes in the program), and some other reasons. So, for 7 years I've struggled to forge a new career path.

Financial independence is my main goal right now but I don't want to take a job that pays under $14/hr b/c i calculated my rent and monthly bills out and anything under $14/hr won't cover me. So at least I have a financial baseline to measure all the jobs I apply for. But I'm putting all of my job-eggs into a certification program basket.

I am finding out some cert programs that are funded by a nonprofit go for either 2,4, or 7 weeks with job placement at the end. But you can't do more than one cert program for free. You can only do one cert program for free that's funded by the nonprofit offering it.

Of course, I found another cert program that is 8 months and under $10K but costs tuition, so I'm seriously considering that as a backup cert program if i can't find another cert program in admin. Ugh.