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[Aklyon]

Long rantish post ahead about lack of focus or indecisiveness or something like that.

I keep looking at all of the things I could do job-wise, then knowing all of the very similarly crappy and long winded repetitious sites I'd have to go through for the nth time with no point in sight firstly because of the reasonable but irritating fact that you cannot email everyone who applies for x job because theres so many people who want it, and secondly because nothing ever happens due to the first point. Its a goddamn important thing yes, but when it seems like you're absolutely no further than where you half the year ago the importance gets defenestrated by the void of nonresponse. Bloody job experience's infinite tautological loop of needing it to get it can go fall into a well. On the sun.

But I could just ignore that for the time being, stay here with family and make nifty chainmail things. Theres only so much I can do with one size of ring though, and it don't really seem like someone would want plain bright aluminum when theres other things you could get instead, like color anodized metals or those celtic designs that use something like 3 sizes of ring. Shipping was a bit too much for me to just buy more rings at this point until I have money to spend like that again.
Or I could make a game of some sort. RPG Maker is on here, but whenever I do art it looks terrible and I honestly don't think I could do a good enough story to be worth playing an rpg for, unless it was a rather very short game. I could make a roguelike and not worry about art at all, but theres seems to be a ton of those recently, and so on and so forth until I've ended up talking myself out of making any genre and I'm back at the top of this rant.
Programming in general I want to be able to do, but if I start up some sort of tutorial or just a guide or anything really, I focus on it for a week or so, and then I get distracted by something else and forget what I wanted to do with it while it sits there incomplete. Then I remember it later, but I can't figure out how it works outside of a vague idea, then it breaks when I try to add anything to it for no reason I can remember, if it worked in the first place anyway.



If you're still looking at this, basically I've been stuck for awhile between the terribleness of trying to get anything done related to jobs and me not being able to keep focusing on recent things for longer than the initial sounds-like-an-awesome-idea part. So I'd like help with the latter, if you guys know anything about it. I doubt the internet can do anything to the former, and I'm tired of walking around the house talking to myself about it.

[freeformschooler]

Hi, me from a year ago!

Have you tried craigslist? Daily? You don't have to go through Taleo, and even simple gigs are better than nothing. What about etsy for selling stuff you make? Host a yard sale? Ebay?

We as a society are sort of moving away from the fifty year job thing. The tiny portion of unskilled jobs in existence are now desired by all 9 bajillion unemployed factory workers, and they have more experience than you. If you have any sort of skill (programming, making chainmail, whatever), try to find a use for it that doesn't involve a regular paycheck at first. That's how I got a start (fixing computers), and it lead into a couple part-time things eventually.

The ADD thing is bad. Any project's most challenging part is its most challenging part. That may sound like a tautology, but you seem smart, and I bet you've gotten through most of life's challenges on those smarts. This creates a sort of feedback loop in the brain where you're fine doing the portion of a project that's easy for your smarts because you've always gotten by that way then get really frustrated when you have to do the actual labor of learning.

[Aklyon]

I'm pretty sure its not just being frustrated at the learning part, as helpful as the rest of the post is freeform. It could be later, but right now (chainmail aside) it feels like I'm not getting anything done because theres other things I could finish, if that makes any sense.

More specifically, I'll start trying something (for example, making something in python), and it'll be going well, then I go do something else, close that window, then by the time I've finished whatever the else was, I've forget its there; yet if I'm looking for something I can find it regardless of how many folders its inside of.
Maybe I need to put more things on the desktop so I don't lose track of them as easily? Not sure I've explained it well, but it made sense I think.

[Jimmy]

Here's a few points that I consider good general advice.

1. Start saving money.

You say you don't have any income? Then that must mean you're still living with your parents, so your expenses are virtually nil. Whatever you get, you save. No luxuries until you have income.

2. Make a budget.

Seems like a silly thing to do without any money, right? Wrong. Starting Monday, collect every receipt when you spend money, and record it all. Get a written record of your expenses and make it a habit to know exactly how much you spend each week.

3. Apply for a job.

One job each day. That's your goal. Every single day you're unemployed, you apply for a new job each day. Don't be picky, you can't afford to refuse a job because it looks hard or takes manual labor. Stop thinking you're going to get a job tapping a keyboard for a living.

4. Get a five year plan.

Once you have income, set your next goal. You want to be a programmer? Take a real course at a local college or TAFE school. Pay for it with your day job, and study at night. Your goal is to have a job in that industry in five years and get out of your shitty manual labor job scrubbing toilets at the local shopping center (trust me, it does wonders for your motivation).