hellwig

What I see from the original post is 39 years of experience of not getting a job and your best advice is to tell him to man up and get a job? Me suggesting otherwise is therefore downvoted twice? What are you going to tell people with a broken leg, just man up and go run that marathon? Assuming that Pathfinder is honest, and I have no reason think otherwise, you can conclude from his post that all conventional methods did not work. Now I don't see a broken, down and out 39 year old, I see a person with a perspective on life that differs from approximately 90% of the population, someone that has nothing to lose, everything to gain and very low cost of living. The only thing that is really holding him back is an environment that keeps telling him to get a 'real' job and pay your dues. Pathfinder, mate, if you are reading this, translate the 'not know what to do now' to 'I am up for anything' and just go with the first thing that seems reasonable feasible and if you stumble and fall on that one, do the next thing, it is not a failure, it is (according to Scott Adams) building up your talent stack. You may have to concede though, that it is likely that there is no retirement for you. I am 37, have been working full time for 20 years and there is no snowball chance in hell that when it comes to my retirement that there will be any left, even though I have paid in all these years. Of course I can do monetary savings, but the fiat currency (well at least here in the UK) is not backed by anything anymore (well except for Nukes that is). So that seems like a really foolish long term/retirement investment. As far as I can see there are only a couple of solid investments, a place to live (everyone has to live somewhere), producing food (everyone has to eat something), generation of energy (energy is a production multiplier) and anything that makes something tangible. The reason why I am so adamant that you need to start for yourself is because it is far easier to make a small wage by being your own boss than receiving a small wage from someone that is either not smart enough to pay better wages or is exploiting you. Also you will have ownership of what you do, you will build something up that is worthwhile being worried about losing it. I'll promise you that if you do that you will be more occupied with new business worries than with your existing personal ones. If not I will happily refund my consultancy fee :-)

First I would say DO NOT GET A JOB, it is the single worst thing you can do at the moment. You have no dependencies except for your own shelter and food. This is ideal situation to start your own simple business, for example grow microgreens and sell them at gyms/health shops/restaurants etc. You indicate unmet potential and not knowing what to do, well starting and growing a business allows you to use both of these negatives and use them to your advantage.