The right way to find work you enjoy?

Hey everyone, I need some help in my work life pretty desperately.
I have tried talking to coaches, counselors, and friends, but nothing is really helping me with this.

For starters, I am 26, broke, unemployed, no degree, no career, and no idea what to do from here. One of the issues I am having is that I do not want to even live in the area I live in. I HATE this area so bad, and getting a job here makes me feel like I have to be here for a long time. That is the same reason it is hard for me to get going in school here. There is a major university one mile from me that I am accepted to, but I pretty much hate the idea of attending.

I do not know what type of career that I want to have. I have no clue at all. I have bad depression right now so that is making it hard for me to be clear on my passions and interests. But I will say that my TOP value and thing that I want in my life is FREEDOM and INDEPENDENCE. I also want financial security and financial freedom. I will list my interests below in order of "my passions" for them.
Please help me to come up with some ideas, and give me advice for what I should do right now.

List of passions and interest in order:
1. Entrepreneurship
2. Flying
3. Adventure in the outdoors
4. Therapy and helping others
5. Living by the beach (haha, yeah, I love the beach)

That is all that I can think of. Please give me suggestions and advice and ideas guys. I really could use it right now.

Thanks

Hello and welcome to Psych Central! I guess we are rather stymied. All I can suggest is to apply to jobs in other places, taking what you can get to build up a resume. Perhaps something associated with business? Sometimes finding what you enjoy involves finding out what you don't enjoy. Maybe at some point you can open your own business.

Wow, can I relate to your post wannabe87. I hate were I live too and I tried with all my might to get out of here and failed. Landed back here and am stuck as can be. Have some health issues which preclude my getting employment right now. Being here is hopeless and steals all drive and motivation. It's a dead end.

At least you have an educational outlet which will lead to better avenues of escape. I'm in a tar pit.

HourHand

What about looking for a job, in a state government branch in one of those areas?

My grandmother's brother, loved the outdoors. He worked I think in his states forestry department.

It's an attitude and rank order game. Decide to get a job, any job, for 1 year and save X dollars so you can move to Y location you prefer. Move and get a job, any job at Y location and start saving X dollars again while deciding do you want to go to school or work independently through/up the job market to Z-type job.

My youngest stepson was athletic and did not want to have a job inside. He started working fast food (when 16 :-) then a pet store then a restaurant as a bar tender (chains like TGIFridays have a program where you can get a job in any of their restaurants; he moved to the other coast for awhile, knowing he had an automatic job waiting for him while he was there) then he became a restaurant manager and then jumped sideways to an international beer company :-) He worked himself up through regional to the national level and just moved to New York City. He's 36 and has no college. Until recently he was still playing on a semi-pro ice hockey team :-) At one point, his much more successful brother (who only had 1-1/2-2 years college) was the sponsor of his hockey team (bought their uniforms, etc.).

You cannot steer unless the car is moving! Get a job in a big box store that specializes in the product of your choice (electronics, clothes, furniture, pets, a mix of things (a department store/Macy's for example) and study everything from all directions. When I got out of college and got my job at Sears, Roebuck I kept myself sane doing that, what I would do if I had my own business selling/producing, "that" department's stuff, how the accounting was done, how credit cards worked (this was back in the early 1970s when credit cards were new), transportation and distribution/warehousing, staff scheduling and payroll, at one time I even interviewed with the security head to be in the security department (after some pervert took a photograph of me going up the escalator from "under" my dress and was caught and his film confiscated, etc.).

Decide to improve your writing and take a job and write about it. Have you read Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich? A sociologist (one of my degrees is in sociology) did an experiment of taking minimum wage jobs and trying to live and wrote about it. Do an experiment you think up that would help you learn more about entrepreneurship opportunities; go get a couple part-time jobs in a couple different tiny businesses and see what you can learn? I worked part-time for nearly 10 years just to teach myself how to get/start a job and then how to quit so the whole thing wasn't so awkward-feeling to me. What do you want from your life? Figure out how to move toward it.

Even though you don't have a degree, you can still be an ESL teacher. There are places where you don't need a degree and they will pay your flight and housing plus salary. If you've got nothing tying you here, check out daveseslcafe.com and make a fresh start! Most south american jobs don't require a degree.

Have you thought about the military? Its a great place to start if your not sure what you want to do. Everything is paid for, meals, housing,,,

military has a hiring freeze. i am 27 yrs old, a degree in computers with no certs, and getting a job in that field is super hard since they want experience. i got the degree in 2010 and finding a job in the state i live in is even more harder. i got some passions too but they require more schooling and that's more money i dont wanna get from the DOE which i still gotta pay for my own class at UoP that i didnt finish.

i am looking for other areas to go into without more schooling and will be trained to do. i barely have a work history, that hurts me even more.

You could look into wordpress development and seo. The thing about wordpress is it is cheap to learn and the people involved are amazingly supportive and willing to help. They have wordpress camps around the world which are nonprofit and cost around 25 usd for two days. There are meetup groups where you can learn for free. There are a zillion other things you can do with wordpress too. Go to Wordpress.org to start. Seo is also cheap to learn and google has changed their algorithm so significantly in September that it is a great time to learn. Basically everyone has to learn it. There are certs but nobody pays attention to them.

Locally I see a lot of gigs on Craig's list but you can also do it freelance. If you go freelance it takes most people 3-5 years to comfort level.

If you can afford it a cert in SQL server is gold. There is mega demand for this. I started as a data analyst and moved up in just a couple of years. I'm tired of it. It's been 10 years so I will be starting at the bottom with wordpress

First, don't get too hung up on a career. People find the weirdest careers and they're happy. Nobody actually plans to do many of them. You just have to be open. These days you don't have to stick too long with a company. A "job" should offer more than a paycheck and insurance. I mean on the job training or advancement or location.... Whatever gets you closer to your goal. Sometimes just meeting people is enough. Any job will help you right now.

Lots of job seeking resources from the dept of labor. In my state you can go down to the workforce center and there are counselors that can help. They most certainly have tools and ideas you never considered. There is also federal grant money.

Check craigslist for jobs. Like everything else you never know what you will find.

Hope that helps.

What are your passions? Maybe people will have suggests of how to work towards them.

video games (requires more schooling too much money to do), animals (very hard to get into that tried to apply to animal shelters for entry level never heard from the manager, volunteered back in college for one day on two different years and have no interest in volunteering anymore), art (havent drawn in a long time its a dead field, crafts cost a lot of money to do havent done that in a long time, eco friendly things again that is more schooling i already have a degree i need to finish but dont have the money for it.

well, i volunteer at a library already had a job interview at a county library and didnt get the job. i have no interest in a business more money, i would like to do something that doesnt require money i need to start with point A not point P! so, i dont know what else i have passions that is it i grew up having passions being diminished because "i was trying to be so white."

There is not enough punctuation so I am not understanding everything written here.

I think "passions" in relation to starting a career is overrated. I imagine most people don't even know what it is like to work in corp land vs a startup or nonprofit. Each of those environment requires a different set of aptitudes. "Video games" says to me you have an aptitude and interest in programming. (Or design?) Plus you indicated you are close to a degree. You've already started in that direction and there are a lot of ways to go. I am thinking video games is a very competitive field but the reality is those skills are used in a lot of areas. I would concentrate more on the skills than the career field. Eventually you might decide a "video game" career is for you or you might find something else along the way.

Art is far from dead but it isn't a career you can count on for money. Never has been. But you can build that skill on the side and make it your focus later.

You have made efforts. It is really just a matter of doing what you are doing but also understanding what you try might not be successful at first. You might need to apply again or try something else until you find something that works. Not getting a job doesn't mean you aren't qualified. It simply means there was another candidate they preferred.

i haven't done programming in a long time, but do love the design/animation and that requires schooling or buy the software which isn't cheap. i already have a degree AAS Network admin which is computers, but have no certifications and no job experience - they only want experience now no entry level anymore.

the BS degree i was working on is web design which is 67% completed, but that isn't my focus right now. i barely have a work history, that is not easy to land any job somewhere not when these employers tell you 'you have no work history, sorry can't hire you.' art isn't dead? really? let's see, you can't even find an art job. i have spoken to a couple of art grads and they couldn't find an art job. i was reading online about that they said if you wanna do art, get a graphic design degree good luck trying to get a job in that too!

i wanted to get an art degree long ago, glad i didn't - even museums aren't hiring for those with art degrees. i have listened to artist who make their own stuff say it is very hard to sell it on the side that hands on creativity isn't what it used to be long ago. i know a woman who crochets and sells it on etsy.com, she said it doesn't bring in enough money to pay the bills and she is a business woman.

so honestly, i really don't know what else to do as i have no other skills that i can used as a backup to make some extra money.....

That has always been the case! Forever and ever! Doesn't make it dead. Makes it hard. I have friends with art jobs. The path was not straight.

Web design? Look at my earlier post on wordpress. You wanted something that didn't require a lot of money to learn. You still have to put in hard work. You won't get to be a designer off the bat. Not even close but it is a direction and demand isn't going away.

It's hard to find a job when you don't have a job , especially a good one. If you're holding out for the right job, you will be unemployed for a very long time.

I would say try to get a lower level position in a company that employs people with your degree. Show you're a valuable employee and climb ladders. If you don't like it, stick with it but continue toook for bigger, better things while gaining job experience.

I know about wordpress. Art in AZ is pretty much dead spoken to people about it. my main concern is to find a job with an income, i can't work on skills and find employment at the same time - it's already 40 hrs a week trying to find employment for me.