What barriers do you face with job process / college process?

Writers do not die rich. Hell, they don't even die out of debt. Just ask Stephen King. I can't even do warehouse work because my back is too unreliable, and all I keep getting are stupid frelling ads from Indeed for companies a) outside of Austin, b) warehouses that want 12 hour shifts and require heavy lifting, and c) Bankers Life sales.

At this point, I contribute nothing and am nothing but a drain on society. I cannot point to a single thing I do in my life that cannot be done faster and better by anyone else. And journalism is dead. You either tow the Ministry of Truth's line and write newspeak, or you disappear, along with any career aspirations you may have had. College for what? I'm interested in nothing.

Yes, I'm writing from the middle of the storm, but that is where I usually find myself most days, anyway, and in that storm, I can see clearly that my options are rattling around like the final two or three grains of sand in an hourglass.

There is no greater hell than to know oneself to be leading a pointless existence. There's no other horizons to reach for. There's no other hills to climb. I've died on all of them. I hate my existence, not just my life, and I can no longer afford to just keep existing in the vague and vain hope that Something Better will come along, because there is no coming along when one has stopped cold and has no forward momentum.

I hate Austin. I hate that I wasted money to move here. I hate that I am now financially stuck here. I hate being dependent on others with no way to move forward. I now truly understand Van Gogh's dilemma. He, too, felt that weight of being burdensome to others.

"During those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them." Revelations 9:6

"Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." Matthew 25:29

I love how you write! There's just something about your writing that interests me. You definitely have a talent!

I'm sorry that you are struggling with so many things, and that there are too many obstacles right now. I hope that you're able to move in the future. From what you said, it sounds like you don't like where you live.

I'm fortunate for making new friends online and having a great therapist where I moved, but I truly don't like the politics where I live. If I even tried to find a job or get into college, I'd be shot down and discriminated against. I'm struggling with a different hurdle of unlikeability - not really due to my mental illness per se, but rather with my appearance: I'm middle-aged (ageism), I'm Asian (racism), and I'm obese (whatever ism that is, if it even exists - maybe a form of ableism, but who knows). I'm also short, which doesn't help when bullies can easily pick on you. My obesity does ward off other forms of harassment, however.

Are you on disability insurance or compensation of any kind? If so, can you live with that? If not, can you apply for that? Every state's SSA office runs differently, so some states are easier to get appointments than others, and some states are more lenient in terms of granting disability than others. But all states will accept appeals, and sometimes it takes a lawyer to help you win your appeal. It sounds like you'd meet the requirements of disability, given your physical and mental challenges.

I truly wanted to rehabilitate and get an education and return to work one day. This pandemic ruined those chances for me - on all fronts. My health has deteriorated, and people hate the way I look. They hate "fat" people and they hate "Asian-looking" people. I know that's an over-generalization of the situation, and most people are kind and what not, but the reality is, discrimination, segregation, hate, and divisions have increased, which makes it hard for the elderly to find work, the disabled to find work, minorities to find work, and obese persons to find work.

I once said that it's okay to be optimistically pessimistic, insofar that you're a realist and very cautious about the times and the risks of the times. Your feelings and concerns are valid, but it's sad when you put yourself down.

Perhaps you don't want to change and instead want people to just accept you as you are. Perhaps you just need a break to just be you and find a way to enjoy something in life, lest you struggle with anhedonia or the like (the inability to feel pleasure, which is a neurological issue, and which may explain treatment-resistant conditions including depression and perhaps even personality disorders).

Have you asked yourself what you would like out of life? Would you like to heal, to find a job, to have friends, to move to a better location, etc.? It seems that you wanted to find work, but that you struggled with finding the right job for you.

Thank you, but it's not your fault that I am stuck in the Pattern. And I apologize ahead of time for the wall of words.

When I ask myself what I want out of life, I get no answer, just the howling wind echoing inside. Healing is no longer possible, and I've given up wasting energy on trying. Finding a job is a joke; besides the two and a half decade old felony, I've got a disintegrating disc and my back decided that now would be a great time to stiffen up and add that pain to the mix. I've never really had friends since being released aside from those I knew from the joint, and they're 2,000 miles away. Moving to a better location is shot because I have no money and I'm stuck in a lease for another six months in a city that is utterly devoid of interest.

The right job for me is a job wherein I have only to deal with paperwork and answering phones, not cold-calling people. Except that of all the computer programs I've learned, QuickBooks was not one of them, and my formula knowledge in Excel is less than stellar. I would love to work as a file clerk in a law office, except that is an impossibility because it would open up any case they would be working on to ancillary attack in court due to the fact my hands touched the file, never mind that I can write motions and paperwork that would make Johnny Cochran blush. I almost went back to Kirby sales, but I cannot commit to 12 hour days, six days a week when my back is the way it is.

I'm a cynical realist. I've realized that life only offers me pyrrhic choices, so no matter which way I go, I end up regretting it. Oh, I can find jobs, but they're always jobs that turn out to be utterly unsuitable for whatever reason. I do what I do for a reason, that reason usually being the elimination of variables that I cannot control or will easily forget. Getting rid of them keeps them from popping up in bad ways. It is exhausting to always have to triple-check every single element of any given job (including things that everyone else takes for granted) to make sure that changing one variable doesn't cause some other variable that was otherwise unaccounted for to change, all while battling my own inner need for absolute perfection and symmetry. As a result, if there is something I cannot control with any logical sense, I walk away and lose interest immediately. I can take nothing for granted; every single variable (and usually, they number in the dozens, if not hundreds) absolutely must be accounted for, and every time there is an error, it is because I didn't account for something or assumed that a default would stay in its default state.

I no longer recognize society as something familiar. It has taken on an alien aspect that I cannot reconcile with my internal expectations, and I find that I have zero trust or tolerance for those trying to convince me that everything is normal. Paying a staggering inflationary increase on everything is not normal, no matter how much it is parroted by talking heads. That is, I believe, the end-goal of the technocracy that has seized control--discriminate, dehumanize, and ultimately destroy the middle class by starting with the fringes of society and working inward. Reminds me of Weimar Germany, only no one reads history anymore so saying that aloud just makes people look at me in confusion.

No, no insurance or state aid. I hate the idea of accepting state aid, and SSID is out because I'd have to work longer than I would live in order to make enough credits to even be eligible for it, a Catch-22. And down here in Austin, there's a thousand and one bureaucracies, so nothing ever gets done.

The financial aspects just exacerbate the problem. To wit, I had a loan application in to try to convert my credit card over to a bank loan. Bank instead gives me a flaming line of equity credit at 20% interest. Then, I applied to change product or whatever so I'd get a near-0% interest loan and be able to pay it off, only I was fired due to my own mess and now, I've not heard from the bank and the loan application deadline is long since overdue, so we can all guess what happened there. And my credit score, the one thing I took pride in, is now dinged for nothing.

Wisdom is knowing that I know nothing and can expect nothing, and that the momentum of nought will continue until interrupted by the momentum of something else. Once in motion, a trend will continue to stay in motion until acted upon by another outside force. It's a law of physics, only applied to the probabilities of life, and my life experience has shown me that this is a valid and utterly inviolable law.

Or, put another way, I am both the condemned gladiator and the lion, and the world is the audience. When I put myself down with conclusions drawn from the perspective of realism, the crowd cheers. When I succeed in something, the crowd holds its breath while waiting for the next blow I strike against myself. Do they not erupt in bloodthirsty applause when I draw my own blood? If I am thrown a weapon, it is one meant for me to use against the lion, but when I strike, it is I who bleeds, and the crowd who cheers for more.

@Michael2Wolves - you are very intuitive, as well as a realist. But I don't think your perspective on the crowd's cheering is accurate. I think the crowd would cheer you on should you improve on any area of your life, and actually take time to self-care, take meaningful risks to step a little outside your realist comfort zone, etc. You certainly have a talent for writing and a stronger vocabulary base than I do. I published a paper - by mere chance though, but I truly am a weak writer. I also have performance anxiety when it comes to writing, and I'm not sure that I have the energy to overcome that.

My T says that there are veterans who have felonies in the past, who eventually find some meaningful career - and sometimes working in government again. They don't have security clearances, or very minimal clearances if they are offered such positions, but they are able to get their lives back. There are also prison-pipeline programs that help some rehabilitate. But that's not offered to all persons, and mental illness remains stigmatized in that arena, unfortunately. I once studied criminal justice and worked with a professor who holds a Ph.D. She was able to get her position after her prison time. She now teaches at a university. It's not the best university, but it's still a decent job. She doesn't have many publications, and she does more qualitative work, but she fulfilled one of her dreams.

It's not impossible to strive for a dream, but it is getting harder and harder these days.

This pandemic has brought out the worst in people, so competition has increased.

I'd like to see you happy and excelling in life.

I don't like how felonies carry no forgiveness and very little restorative justice. I wished that society would offer a restoration of privileges as a second chance, or even third.

Hello

I live in Europe, and the education system is a little bit different from other countries

Anyway

Private but big job placement company (Page Personnel/Micheal Page, for example) can be bad

I fell into a black-hole because I faced people that somehow didn't have a practical approach when it comes to find an occupation to a person that experienced difficulties or mid-term unemployment
I used to be a strong person but being ignored of course can make you doubt of yourself

I've been in many job placement agencies and many employees either seem not to know how to manage or they are not professional

I don't really know how to explain

I wish they were just a little more "mature" and proactive