How does a lovely geek drop-out find gainful employment?

A couple things jump out here for me, and maybe they are things that you could put back to your friend to help get a bit more focus on where she wants to go. said: "What would be the ideal type of work for someone with no formal education but who has amazing talents? ...dropped out of Junior High and never looked back, basically educating herself via books, experience and internet. She is super smart... Something that really bears remembering here is that education is rarely used in employment as a measure of how smart someone is, but of whether he or she has the ability to complete tasks and succeed at long-term goals and projects. If I were someone who had money to give for a service to be rendered, the first thing I would think is, "In thirthy plus years, this person hasn't even been able to finish a secondary education, something that is compulsory in most developed countries. Why would I expect her to have the stick-tuitive-ness to complete any work for me?" I truly don't mean to be harsh, and I do not ever judge someone based on their level of schooling. But this is how it looks from the outside. "She has worked in numerous jobs, from food vendor to assistant to a CEO of a global financial corporation, to simulatneous translations online to cleaning people's houses and on and on." Is the fact that your friend doesn't seem able or willing to see things through, the reason that she has worked mostly at entry-level jobs? If so, then why is she looking for something outside of the same kind of low-skill entry-level work now? Has something changed for the better? "Another quirk she has is a really ~really~ uncanny way of drawing people into stores. I've seen it myself more times than I can remember at this point. She will enter a virtually empty store and within a minute after people start crowding in. So maybe that's something to capitalize on as well as the above mentioned." Interesting but there's no way to monetize it. If it's just that people seem to happen to walk into a store after her, and not because she's engaging them or somehow displaying merchandise or drawing attention to herself or something similar, a shop owner is not likely to see a quantifiable talent that can be measured and paid accordingly. "Basically she never felt she was fulfilling her life's purpose." ...."help her...and feel like *she's doing her life's work*" I don't know how to say this without sounding harsh. But working at a fulfilling job that serves one's highest purposes is a luxury. If your friend is trying to make money to live on and feed herself and pay the bills, she doesn't have the luxury of holding out for something that nurtures her soul and her spirit. There are bigger fish to fry right now. Especially if she can't sit or stand for long periods of time, or lift anything. These restrictions rule out computer work, bookkeeping or other secretarial or clerical work, retail, child care, cleaning. "Maybe a job where she could work from home, online with occassional projects where she could venture out." How do you see this co-existing with the fact that she can't sit down for long periods of time? Something else I haven't seen mentioned that might be helpful for answerers: what assets does your friend bring to this table? She has no car, you said, and apparently neither any access to public transportation (since geography is what keeps her from going back to school). Does she have a computer, an internet connection, a phone? You mentioned translation -- does she speak multiple languages? Right now, all we can see is a beautiful, creative, engaging soul... inside a homebound, uneducated body with little professional work experience to show for decades as an adult. Can you help us understand a little more about the professional assets your friend has? I know that there are entities out there who might see the ability to incorporate driftwood in her everyday life as a remarkable skill worthy of a job, but they aren't likely to be offering work-from-home options, which are http://ask.metafilter.com/85544/Its-not-that-Im-lazy-I-just-want-to-sleep-later. Based on all we've heard here, the only thing that really comes to mind for me would be freelance writing (although good paying freelance gigs are hard to get and hard to earn a steady income from), or selling things on eBay.

she might not have gone to a building called school, but certainly her knowledge is right up there with the best of them And again, school/degrees are not used as an indicator of "smart" or even "competent" -- they are used as indicators of "plays well with others" and "can handle structured, hierarchical environments" and "can complete tasks with moderate supervision." My honest take on this is that your friend does not need suggestions of the perfect thing to be doing -- she needs to solve whatever the underlying issues are that are keeping her from seizing the opportunities already in front of her. If the perfect work-from-home but without having to sit, stand, or do repetitive tasks job existed, we would all be doing it. It doesn't, and we aren't. There are an almost infinite number of jobs people do that are outside of the usual 9-5 grind, but there aren't many good ones that don't take a lot of initiative and capacity to network. Is she willing to move to a city where not having a car is not a problem and there are a lot more economic opportunities? Or what about becoming an entrepreneur, drawing on her wide experience for inspiration? Can she make or grow stuff to sell at farmers markets? (Have you seen what people are willing to pay for soap, candles, and other products, if the packaging and marketing are done right?) Could she make jewelry or design t-shirts or screenprint awesome designs on underwear, and get them into stores in whatever nearby towns have the right kind of people who would buy such things, plus selling online via Etsy or wherever such things are sold?

It's hard to suggest work that could help someone fulfill their life purpose when we don't know what their life purpose is.

Remember when you were looking for Grass Roots magazine? And it was learned that this magazine did not have an online presence at all? If I'm doing the math correctly, your friend dropped out of school right during the middle of all-things-hippie. Maybe she could contact that magazine, and offer to put them on the WWW, later maintaining the site as needed for each publication.

Without at least a high-school degree, your friend's options in the corporate world are limited. Seconding the idea that she might be best off as an entrepreneur, especially since she seems to be artistically gifted. Lots of people love handcrafted things and are willing to pay for them - could she do jewelry-making, commercial art, or the like? I would also suggest graphic design, except for that pesky little "lives in the boonies and has no car" thing. Could she either move to a place with public transit, or get herself a car (even a cheap heap would be a set of wheels). Getting a job as a graphic designer often relies less on formal education and more on the quality of one's portfolio. Finally, if she's well and truly stuck in the boonies, and a car is absolutely out of the question, she could stretch her income by growing her own food - putting in a vegetable garden and the like.

Thanks for your good help people. If you have any other ideas - you can feel free to connect with me through meta mail. Best wishes.

Can she not, at least, get her GED? If I'm reading this right, she's 48 now, but left school when she was about 13? A high school diploma could help quite a bit.

Sounds like owning her own business or freelancing might be better for her than a "job" working for someone else. If she does want to be employed by someone else, but is finding that not having a degree is holding her back, she might be suited to completing a degree via credit for examination. See http://www.bain4weeks.com/ for details on how to do this at a legitimate, accredited university. (The 4 weeks refers to the shortest time frame in which it's reasonably feasible to take all the exams, assuming that one already has a lot of college level knowledge and just needs a brief exam prep review. If your friend is as extensively self-taught as you have described it will probably be no problem for her.)

Oops - last sentence of first para should be "she may not even get to the interview stage because of her track record". Sorry :)