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Had some problems getting onto the site for about a hour. I don't have a clue why. I am on my old cranky backup PC.

I know precisely what you experienced. I had the same thing happen to me twice.(only lost one wife and two houses, one truck and my sanity for a time)

You are correct about the trades. I am multicraft now but was formerly in realestate and advertising. I am now able to do whatever.

The problems I see with most folks is that they exaust all their resources because they stay in place.

I found that if you put your first and last check in the bank. Have some stuff that you can turn into ready cash, and have the willingness to drag up and go where the work is, that your likelyhood of finding work is one heck of a lot better.

Things are always in a state of flux. You have to be as well or the things will move away from you. You have to chase it and not wait for it to come to you.

Just some advice from a mid fiftyish player who learned the hard way as most men do.

I was brought up by parents who were brought up in the depression, and to have a job, any job, was what you did. You get a job, hunkered down, bought a house, and stayed put, at the same job for 30-40 years until you retired, with a comfortable retirement pay.

Well that worked, back in the 50's and early 60's. Then things started changing, and companies started being run by accountants instead of professionals in the industry. Gradually, the quarterly report, and quarterly profit became the corporate goal (no more long term goals), and the companies started shutting down plants, and moving. First they failed to invest in their own basic infrastructure - basic plant equipment and maintenance and upgrades (to save money), then it became uneconomical to fix their neglect, so they had to build a new plant, so they decided to move their plants to cheaper labor areas (south) and the 'rust belt' was created.

Then, they with the invention of container shipping, and really the defeat of the long shoremen union agreement in the early 1980's, that they had to stuff/unstuff any containers within 50 miles of any port, the ability to ship a whole container of goods from Japan to the door of the distributor in anywhere, Kansas, and put imports really on every doorstep in the US.

So, containerization, killed the basic philiosophy of our economy, and then the japanese started moving their production plants to china and did the same thing to japan and killed the japanese economy.

Then in the 90's they started importing workers fronm overseas (actually this happened in 1965 with ted kennedy's change in the immegration laws - but it took about 20-30 years to really start kicking in).

And then in the 90's, even the accountants couldn't keep their quarterly reports working, so they and the top management started cheating - the crooked superceded the hones but misguided accountants,

And so now it comes down to chasing jobs and chasing work.

In the 80's, in the oil crash in Houston, I hung on, hoping to get a job, (3500 foreclosures a month in Houston). My main investment, my house, could only rent for half the mortgage payment, and I lost everything - no jobs on my level and experience, over qualified for cheap inexperience jobs (they knew I would leave if a job came along). I finally let it go for half what I had paid for it. I lost my 40,000 equity on an 80,000 house. And interestingly enough, the IRS rules mean you are taxed if you make money when you sell a house, but if you lose money, it is not even deductable.

The next phase is now in progress, where there will be almost no steady jobs in this country anymore, except for government jobs. And we are headed into a gigantic downward spiral for wage equality with Bengladesh.

And this doesn't even cover the taxation part and the coming US bankruptsy and resulting world crash.

You and Snopercod and me are getting too old to drop everything and 'chase' jobs.