Career Help and Advice

A year ago, I was laid off from a job as manager of technical documentation for a company, about the time that AI was just beginning to make serious I ended up in the hospital for COPD about six months after that, again after doing exactly what you're doing. The job market, especially for writers, is seriously FU'd.

After I got out of the hospital, at the age of 60, I threw everything job related in the trash, then spent about a week working out a strategy for what I needed to do. In my particular case:

1. I acknowledged that no one today was going to hire a sixty year old man, especially in the world of tech, unless they were senior management. I had been a consultant for most of my life, which also pretty much meant that this particular track was not going to happen either. This was a hard admission to make, but it was necessary because it meant that I should stop putting effort into strategies that weren't working.
2. Assess where you have a voice. I have been blogging regularly since the early 2000s, and have worked as a journalist and editor at various points. Neither pays terribly well, mind you, because publishers are dying, but it did mean that I've managed to build up a reputation in a few key tech spaces.
3.Build out that network. I started newsletters, and made a real push to publish at least two online newsletter posts a week, on Linked In. I've since branched out to other places, but I now have a newsletter with 10,000 subscribers.
4. Set up a podcast or webcast and stick to it. I usually try to do at least one of those a month, typically alternating between interviews and explainers. If you're not familiar with video and audio broadcasting, get familiar.
5. Set up a calendly account, and promote it as a way to let other people get on your schedule - I usually have a free coffee hour where I let others set up a zoom or google meet meeting, and this has opened up a lot of other opportunities.
6. Treat yourself as a business. If you're a writer, write books. if you're an essayist, write collections. If you're a novelist, write novels. I do all three.
7. Be patient. It took me about a year for everything to finally work on all cylinders, and while money is still tight, I'm making around $75K a year as my own business, and should be making north of $120k a year once some final projects ramp up.

I'm now getting to the point where I'm turning down office work because I would be taking a pay cut, and would likely end up doing nothing but arguing with the CEO of the company. I other words, once you got independent, you'll find it's a one way trip. Is it worth it? Most of the time.

One more point. LinkedIn is not a place to find a job. It's a place to promote yourself. These are different things.