Following up on this post I realize I have a very serious problem: the lack of self-esteem or value makes it hard to sell yourself or your ideas. If your underlying belief system is that everything you say or do is of no consequence, it makes it hard to get through the interview process, assuming you can even get one.
If you don’t believe you deserve it, you won’t get it.
The best advice I could have given myself, had I realized it, is that relying on jobs that other people create and define is never going to work for me. Temperamentally and physically/biologically I’m better off doing my own thing. But then there it is: how do you sell whatever it is you’re doing or making if you don’t believe it’s any good? And how could it be good, if you made it?
Imagine how you would manage this if you were faced with having to find a whole new life for yourself in less than a month due to a failed domestic situation? If you’re a reasonably normal person, well-adjusted and comfortable with yourself, this may not be a big deal. You have friends or other resources.
But that’s not my situation. Thirteen years I have lived here and I have no network to draw on and not much in the way of local knowledge to use to navigate a new course. It’s going to be a rough stretch.