I woke up on my kitchen floor in the Philippines in 2015 after swallowing every pill I could find. They forced charcoal down my throat at the hospital. That's what they do when you try to kill yourself with pills. I survived. That wasn't the first time my brain tried to kill me. Just the most dramatic. I just wrote the whole story. From hearing voices as a kid and thinking it was normal, to quitting school at 15, to managing movie theaters at 18, to losing everything after 9/11, to moving to the Philippines, to the suicide attempt, to the 2022 heart attack, to sending out 450 job applications this year and getting zero offers. All of it. If you want to know how I went from three mental hospital stays and a suicide attempt to making $2,500-5,000/month from Medium and running multiple freelance contracts, it's all in there. Fair warning: it's raw. It's long. And there's no inspirational bullshit at the end where everything magically gets better. I still hear voices every day. I still take medication every day. I'm not cured. I'm just too stubborn to quit. https://jasonjamesweiland.medium.com/if-my-life-didnt-happen-to-me-i-never-would-have-believed-it-949c27118122?sk=e459d5456d39cf76dae1c70375f8498b Read it if you want. Don't if you don't. Either way, I'm still here.

If you're here, you're probably over 40 and fighting the same fight I am. Sending out resumes that disappear into the void. Getting ghosted by recruiters. Watching younger people get hired for jobs you're overqualified for. Wondering if you're unemployable or if the entire system just broke while you weren't looking. You're not imagining it. The job market is brutal right now. Especially for us. I'm 57. I've been freelancing for over 20 years. I have a degree. I use AI tools every day. I'm faster and better at my work than I've ever been. And I still can't get hired. Not because I'm not good enough. Because companies don't want to invest in people like us anymore. We're too expensive. Too experienced. Too likely to know our worth and not accept garbage wages. This group exists because we're all dealing with the same thing. And most of us are doing it alone. Scrolling LinkedIn at 2am wondering what we're doing wrong. Applying to jobs we're overqualified for and still not getting callbacks. Trying to figure out how to rebuild a career in a market that decided we're disposable. You're not alone. That's why we're here. Drop a comment and introduce yourself. Where are you? What kind of work are you looking for? What's your biggest struggle right now? Let's actually talk about this. Let's help each other. Let's stop pretending this is normal and start figuring out how to survive it together. Welcome. I'm glad you're here.