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.

We’re glad you’re here. This space is for creators 40+ who want to explore AI as a partner in writing, storytelling, and business. Take a moment to share: - Who you are - What you’re working on (big or small) - One way you’d like AI to support your creative work - share a picture of your workspace! No pressure—keep it short and simple. This is just a place to start the conversation. Looking forward to meeting you,Jason

I took the liberty of taking one of Jason's recent articles and make a NotebookLM movie of it, then posted it to LinkedIn. You can check out the post here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/natepacyga_i-wanted-to-be-a-lifer-at-a-great-software-ugcPost-7401657611244511233-a3up

I see a lot of you in here grinding through job applications. Tailoring resumes. Writing cover letters. Following up on interviews that go nowhere. And I get it. I've been there. Hell, I'm still there sometimes. But here's what I've been thinking about lately. What if we're asking the wrong question? We keep asking "How do I get hired?" when maybe we should be asking "How do I stop needing to get hired?" Nobody wants to hire people over 40. We all know this. The algorithms filter us out. The hiring managers see our experience as "overqualified." The salary expectations don't match their budgets. We can keep banging our heads against that wall. Or we can build our own door. I'm not talking about some massive startup with investors and employees. I'm talking about something that's yours. Freelancing. Consulting. Coaching. A service business. A digital product. Something you control. Because here's what I've learned after months of building my own thing while freelancing on the side: The traditional path is broken. But there are other paths. The data actually supports this. People are starting businesses in record numbers right now. Over 5 million new business applications in 2024. That's 50% more than in 2019. And here's the kicker: 64% of entrepreneurs in the US are over 40. We're not too old for this. We're actually in the sweet spot.Most entrepreneurs don't even launch their businesses until they're 42. But I'm not going to lie to you. It's scary as hell. I've failed at business before. Multiple times. And starting again at 57, broke, with decades of failure behind me? That takes everything I've got. But I've never been this far along. I've never had this much momentum. I've never felt this certain that I'm onto something. Here's what's different this time. I'm not choosing between a job and a business. I'm doing both. I'm taking freelance work to keep money coming in. And I'm building my own platforms, my own products, my own audience at the same time.