first off, I don't have a degree so that's one battle, but i'm an isolationist so that's battle #2 and its much harder to win.
During the first half of my career it was easy to find work because i was green and not charging much. towards the middle part i relied on a network of contacts and finding work was super easy. then i decided to isolate myself - i dropped all my contacts, deleted everything i had ever created (several websites that i ran for years), removed myself from social media and now work is very difficult to get. I didn't even realize this was the issue until recently.
In order to fix this:
1. I have started to rebuild my social network and have set up references
2. I now view social media apps as Personal Branding applications and use them as such
3. I built a portfolio site and added a bunch of my old projects to it
4. Look for little projects i can knock out in a few hours or days, work on them, and add them to my site