How to stay motivated? I have no idea!

I have been trying, for years now, to find some way to earn a living on my own. I’ve known for a long time that working offshore was not going to last. I did my very best to prepare. I saved all I could. I invested the best way I could figure out how (stocks, real estate, training, etc). I spent a lot of time trying to learn photography and writing. I started blogging. I even went to Mexico to get certified to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL).

I’ve spent my life working at sea. I’ve earned the highest license there is. I’ve been laid off the ships since mid-September 2015. I haven’t had a single interested response for any of the thousands of resumes I’ve sent or applications I’ve filled out. I don’t expect to see any until the price of oil goes up quite a bit and stabilizes. Maybe then I can go back to work. IF my licenses are still good.

I’m trying everything I can think of to earn income even if I can’t get back to work. Some are predicting the oil field won’t recover for 3-5 YEARS, if ever! That means I’ve got to make my savings last for the rest of my life. At the rate I’m going now, they won’t last even for the rest of this year.

In the meantime, I’ve been working as hard as I can to make my blog interesting and figure out how to ‘monetize’ it. I’ve done all I can to promote it, but there is some issue with it where it’s keeping people from easily being able to ‘like’ a post or ‘follow’ the blog. I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it on my own and I can’t find anyone who can help me. It doesn’t help that my computers have been on the fritz for a couple of months and my internet has been completely out for the last few days.

I’ve also been trying to work on my photography. I would like to find a way to promote them to the world and hopefully someone out there would like one enough to buy one every once in a while. It seems the universe is totally against that idea!

From some sick, greedy bastards hacking my thumb drive and blackmailing me to get my photos back, to having my computer refuse to open the photos so I can see them because it’s stuffed full, to now having almost none of them transferred to the new hard drive! I’m also unable to download the photo editing software I use (Lightroom), since the internet keeps dropping off before the program finishes downloading.

So, I am getting incredibly frustrated. It seems for every thing I try to do, there is another roadblock set in front of me. I’m having a hell of a hard time trying to stay motivated to do anything. I’m just trying to find a way to survive financially before I lose everything I’ve worked so hard for all these years.

I’m about to give up on getting the computer to work until the modem comes. Does anybody have any suggestions for how to promote, or sell photography online? I’ve tried Craigslist and Varage Sale, no response yet. Trying to figure out eBay but would rather avoid that one.

If anybody has any ideas on selling photos, please let me know! These 2 are just a couple of examples. I’ve got thousands! Look around my blog for more, almost all of them here are my photos (I occasionally have to find something on google).