What to do now?
After 25 years of success in business, my company went obsolete 3 years ago and I had to close the doors. We had to move out of CA to keep afloat, so we ended up isolated in a state I never dreamed of living in. After 3 years of unsuccessfully looking for work, with little to no experience in anything else, I've given up on looking for work and started college. But at 49, I know this may be futile as it means 4 years before I can use it for anything, and agism will be an issue with entry level positions.
I'm totally lost, empty, lonely, and purposeless. I did decently this year before school got out, but now that it's summer, I am back to nothing to do. I have no hobbies anymore, with no money to spend on myself, and lack interest in finding anything new. All I do is piss off my wife and kids with my bad attitude and total lack of enthusiasm.
What do I do know? I've tried so many things and still can't find anything to be proud of or to validate myself. My self esteem is at its greatest low. I'm struggling to get out of bed. I need a purpose, and something to feel worth.
Thanks for listening...
I don't know if this is helpful to you but here goes. I'm 40 years old and started three businesses. The first two flopped and the third earns me an income.
The first time my business failed I felt devastated. But I took the lessons learned and tried again because I had nobody to fall back on. The second time I had a little money set aside and a safety plan.
Even though my third business is doing well it's vulnerable. I write educational courses and there are only a few companies who are buying.
So I wrote a couple of ebooks to diversify and to my surprise they started earning me about a hundred dollars a month. So I decided to diversify further and took a course in earning an income blogging through a website called income school. I just spent about an hour each day on it to learn a trade to fall back on should my business fail. I did it besides my regular job.
After 1.5 years it's earning me about 3000 dollars a month. Not a full income and not very stable but it did work and I only spent an hour a day.
You lost the business but you didn't lose 25 years of business experience. Start a project. Keep it small and fun at first with room to grow. (Blogging for instance, is a business that requires very little start up money.) Even if it's a partial success it will get you back in the right frame of mind and earn you some money.
@LuckyDucky79
Thanks, that's a fair idea that I have explored, (blogging), but I have nothing to say. I am a decent writer, but what subject? I have little confidence that I have anything of value to teach someone or offer advice about. My business advice would be unuseful {other than: bring in receivables), and technical details out of date (obsolete). I am horrible at social media (nothing to share, not even lunch photos), and have few Facebook friends now. The only preaching I could do come with no upper education to back up any authority, so even if well informed, I have no credentials for anyone to see me as authoritative. In other words, I'd be nothing more than a hack spewing garbage. Who'd want to listen to that?
What do you blog about, if I may ask? If I could find something to write about worth anything anyone would care about, I surely would love to try!
@philosophicalMaple1008 Gardening, home upgrading, hiking are perfect for blogging. You really don't need to be an expert. It's more about finding beginner level questions and answering those in the most helpful way you can.
For example, if your blog is about dogs you could write an article about the question: how much do cockerspaniël pubs cost? It gets a lot of traffic because that's what people Google.
You spend about 15 minutes researching the answer and then write a better post than your competition. Your writing style is helpful, just like you're talking to a friend. It's more important to be an enthusiast then an expert. And you don't use social media. Just churn out blog posts that rank on Google.
It does take months before you start generating enough pageviews to earn some income so approaching it as a hobby (with business sense) at first helps. A much faster way of earning an income is YouTube videos. I haven't tried this approach but I know a lot of people who have been successful.
If you want to learn more about the method 'income school' has a YouTube channel where they explain almost everything that's in their program. It's a little salesy but I guess you want that from people who teach you how to run an online business :)
Also, there are other approaches to blogging but I've only tried this one and it worked for me. Now I sound salesy :)
@LuckyDucky79
Something to think about. Thanks again. I have little confidence in my ability to choose a subject I'd want to talk about regularly, over and over, but if I can find one, it could at least give me a hobby if nothing else.
