OP I think you need to change your perspective, philosophy, and outlook--
Failure is just a step on the path to success. Failuring to try is trying to fail-- translation: If you're not failing, you're not trying. So, pat yourself on the back: You're already on the road to success.
Look at cases of people like Eric Thomas-- See a brief overview of his life here: https://youtu.be/gV1ZK8dgXG0?t=52 or David Gogginns.
- Get on Youtube and check out Motivational Speeches and Motivational Music
- Pick a project to work on.
if you're 23 without kids, you don't need a job that involves a 2.5 hour commute. You should consider applying to jobs in other states & cities if you can't find local ones within 30 minutes of where you live.
For me, I dropped out of grad school, drove across the US to lived in a tent in the SF Bay for a month applying to jobs until I landed one (not a unique story-- the same is true for many people). Laid off after 4 months.
I then lived on a friend's rural property and landscaped part time for rent, while teaching myself to build a web app over the course of a few months. I also realized renting a place in Mexico would only cost about $300/month, and since I learned Spanish in HS, I decided to try living in Mexico-- for the purpose of a low cost lifestyle in order to take time to teach myself web app development.
What I'm trying to say is: Success takes lifestyle sacrifice: you might have to move across the country, and/or live very frugally, and/or.
Get creative! Opportunities don't come easy-- sometimes you have to make sacrifice and make moves!
How badly do you want success? Badly enough to move across the country and live out of a tent for 1-3 months?
You could work time and live in a tent in a forest, (or foreign country, or low cost/part-time/work-trade rural property)-- like I did-- in order to build projects-- visiting cafes/libraries every day for wifi access. Showering at a community center. Getting food from food banks. Cooking out of a camping stove. I've spent cumulative months that way in Alaska, Oregon, California, Texas, while working on becoming a self-taught software engineer. In cases of tent living, my tent was forests in state parks in Portland, Alaska, & on WWOOF properties (tent/cabin) Texas, California.
Useless skills? Guess what-- plenty of people are in that boat. I was-- thats why I am telling you my story.
Look: 1. The skills required by an economy change with time. So all of us have to build new skills once in a while.
2. Goods & Services are not uniformly distributed in an economy-- the best jobs in a particular industry might not be where you currently live. If you really want success, you might have to move (temporarily-- for a few months or years), like I did.
Check out the skills are in demand-- via good data sources & visualization such as "BLS: Visualize it: Wages and projected openings by occupation" https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2019/article/wages-and-ope...
Cross reference well paid skills, in high demand, with your interests. Ideally, a skillset w/o a degree requirement (examples: software dev, IT security, sales, digital marketing, etc.).
If you were interested in web app dev, I'd tell ya:
- Start building projects. Check Udemy.com for courses in NodeJS or Python web frameworks for example-- Click "Categories" in the upper left and you'll see a ton of in-demand skills you can learn at a low cost (note: only pay the promo price-- about $12. If its more, just create a new email account & new udemy account, and you'll get promo price again). For a IT SKILLS ROADMAP check out https://roadmap.sh/
- next, build a website featuring a portfolio, description of your professional & personal interests, and links to your resume
- Then build an online presence-- post your resume on multiple resume websites like Indeed.com . Get on LinkedIn.
......
Success is challenging. It requires strategic sacrifice, optimism, discipline, and focus. And you can't focus on successful actions if you're complaining. So stop complaining, stop focusing on what's wrong, and focus on what's going right (you have a laptop, Wifi? You're young w/o obligations? No reason you can't self-study a new, in-demand skillset), and start taking action.
TLDR: Did I stop trying to achieve my goal and career dream of earning the career skills of a software engineer, after I was laid off in the SF Bay after just 4 months? No. I kept at it, lived in a tent & eventually another country to reduce rent, & improve my skills: learned to make, then made app from scratch, then published a web portfolio which featured my app (and another 2-3 smaller, projects). Landed a remote job within 2 weeks, where I was tasked with learning a new programming language.
I had to create the career achievement goal, then promise myself to commit achieving it no matter what-- self teaching, tent, foreign country, then moving to a hub of that particular industry (in this case, IT)... initially I failed. Tried again. Eventually, with enough work & sacrifice, I broke into the industry. I applied to Google & Facebook, and interviewed with them-- Currently I'm not great at data structures & algorithms (hackerrank style) interviews, but I know that with enough practice, if I want to, I can get a role at those or similar, industry leading & well paying IT companies.
In fact, I've already had 3 different careers-- just a few years working in a particular occupation (Sales, Marketing, Software Engineering). I think its likely I'll have 2-3 more careers in my lifetime-- I certainly could if I chose to: I'd just take time to learn new skills. I've always wanted to learn: Carpentry, Electronics, House construction, Organic Farming & Livestock raising. I can perhaps take on some of those careers.
"“Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.”
— Aldous Huxley