If it's any consolation, you're the life of the party at cblf. Bad news, good news, or in between, you express yourself in a very heart-felt way that makes people care about you.

To me, getting a job these days all relates to knowledge. More than half the time, the knowledge has to be packaged up as some sort of a degree, license, certification or ticket. America is getting heavily into a sort of cookie-cutter evaluation ethos called 'quality control' that, among other things, tries to mechanically assure that the people working in a certain job have a certain background. So you can't just get a free try-out in any quasi-technical job, you have to have some sort of rubber stamp from a training process. Some such things are expensive, but when there's an area that's in demand, there may be student loans available. Dental hygienist, HVAC repair (know what an HVAC is? lots of jobs there) or cleaning, hotel management -- these are ticketed items.

Maybe it wouldn't be good to go into too much detail here, but what special knowledge or training do you have?

I don't remember if I have mentioned yet the example of my friend, now 23, who was totally unemployed and very depressed even though he'd taken a 3 year commerce program and learned some basic banking in a temporary job. He basically sat in his room and used the rest of his money smoking pot for a few months. (There was also a chronic medical condition weighing on his mind.) Finally, even though he is ethnically Ashkenaz and had no special Chinese friends or interests, he decided that China was the wave of the future, so the one thing he could rouse himself to do was to start studying Mandarin, at first on his own and then later in a continuing-ed class. Being depressed and not having anything else to do, he just sat on his bed and studied it up and became a fluent speaker. Went for an interview at a bank and mentioned he was interested in international work -- one of the interviewers also spoke Chinese, and they were off.

If you're thinking of joining the armed forces anyways, why aren't you learning Arabic or Dari? Much of your country's armed forces, including a fair number of naval people, are involved in an ongoing conflict in lands where most of them are illiterates who can't even read a street sign. How embarrassing. It wouldn't take you much effort to get on top of that pack, ىوث أفندي !

Despite some people working at Walmart and McDonalds, this really IS a knowledge economy now and economic optimism lies entirely in knowledge. Thanks to the internet, an amazing amount of it is available free. How are you getting yours?