I've been unemployed (without a steady job) for almost 10 years now. At my last job I was a sanitation technician for the gov't at 18 working 15$/hr
I moved 1500km away from home and landed in a Statistically horrible city (murder capital).
I was homeless for 2 of those years. I only found a place because I got on assistance.
I've rented a small apartment that I have managed to keep throughout all that time, only because of the assistance.
I don't have a GED. I've been back to school 6x since the age of 16 (clearly the school system doesn't work for me.
But it's a catch-22 because you “supposedly” need the GED to even apply literally anywhere.
I've been interviewed, but I know the minute I leave the store/office its “smile-and-wave-now, throw- his-application-in-the-shredder-when-he-isn't-looking”
I've been at this for 10 years, and nothing changed.
If anything the pool of jobs that are in this town that I actually want to do is non-existent for me. But, I don't make enough to put groceries in my cabinets, let alone leave the city.
I did that once after I lost my last job. Hitchhiked across the country, and lived in several cities. No matter where I go, I can't find work (I'm not a manual labour kind of person, but I grew up around construction sites.)
I don't have any depth perception, I don't have a sense of smell.
And I kept going back to school off my own dime. But every time I started something would go wrong, or the teachers didn't know how to retain my attention to the lesson, nor are they equipt to handle learning, the way I've learned throughout my whole life.
I was Ostracized for it, by teachers and peers alike.
I feel like I was pushed out of society as a whole, and now I'm forced to live off handouts because I can't do anything else.
I could try the “flip life” I know how to do that, the problem? No one around here is buying anything for novelty, and I can't sell fan-made pixel art to save my life, cause no one gonna spend 40$ on a piece of art when they would rather take that 40$, go up the street, and knock on 15 doors looking for the next hit of Fentynal or Down (same applies for the novelty, they'd rather spend the money trying to kill themselves)
Edit: was gonna post this up for all of Reddit to see, but Reddit didn't let me, apparently, I had to put it in a group somewhere, so this seemed the most appropriate. No worries if not, just one of those late-night rants coming out of the blue… I'm just fed up.