Failed entrepreneur, broke, unemployed, now taking care of aging parents. Help.

I've been here before and it's a tough place to be!

I've found a useful first step is to try and regain a sense of control over your life. When your focus is trying to influence others (i.e. your parents, potential employers), it's easy to feel like you have no control over anything. That is a recipe for learned helplessness and depression: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Is there one thing that you can control? It could be blogging every day, it could be going on a run every day (which does wonders for fighting depression!), it could be anything. Whatever it is, it has to be something that you can control and can successfully accomplish without having to get the buy-in of others.

Good luck!!

Go to church and pray!

Entrepreneurs don't take risks — they manage them.

"People here want their safe, comfortable, 9-5 jobs, and their must-see-TV at night. There is no ecosystem to help drive and create new things."

Considering your situation, a stable 9-5 sounds like a better option for you than a new and risky venture.

1. Massive debt: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/

2. The Internet.

3. Parents: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/01/29/financial-independ...

4. You are not responsible for your family's well-being. You can try to help, but not if it costs you your health/...

5. You can help them better if you're doing well.

It sounds like your family is trying to drag you down to their level.

I really don't have much personal experience to draw on here, but just to add my two cents, you might try to think about why you initially became an entrepreneur, techie, developer. Something that always makes me feel better no matter what my work-load or responsibilities is spending some time on a project just for the sake of my own interest. These are NOT money-makers, just rough ideas for anything that truly interests me from a tech standpoint. Like maxdemarzi said, do something to regain confidence, interest in your work, etc. You can't fix all these problems at once.

You need to hear this: Get off the bitch train and do something about it.

A few observations:

- Your post is a little judgmental of the people living this area. 9-5 jobs are nothing to be ashamed of and wanting to watch TV after a hard day isn't necessarily a fault. If I were a business leader in this area I'm not sure I'd be interested in working to fix this if such a thing is even possible or desirable.

- What is your skillset? Are you a programmer? If so then you should be able to find work anywhere, you could work remotely, or start a business.

Doing something out of guilt is nothing I'd ever recommend. If you were doing this out of love then maybe this might make sense.

You need to get a fresh start. I think regardless of the situation (although yours may be more extended), we all have a sense of guilt for "abandoning" people, but you have to realize that you can't help anyone unless you help yourself first. I do have my own story, but it's not something I want to publicly share, though I'd be happy to tell you over skype if you really want to know.

Bottom line is... you can stay around and try to fix things, but your chances for success are low. I have a philosophy in life: Never stay in a place where you're too happy or unhappy. Happiness brews complacency, and unhappiness breeds distrust and hopelessness. I don't know your skill set, but I'd suggest moving somewhere, working to save up, and then restarting your life. The hard part is getting past the loss of time.

Yeah your situation right now sounds awful. Its tough to be under-appreciated by people whom you're trying to help. Here are a few things to try.

0. Put your email in your profile so people can email you suggestions/work/jobs privately.

1. Get ANY locally available job just to get out of the house regularly and interact with people and start earning some $. Then start looking for something you like or enjoy etc. Do you have any skills people buy on ODesk or other places?

2. Start exercising daily. Don't need a gym membership to be effective. Google "body weight exercises."

3. Spend some time (an hour-ish doesn't have to be continuous) outside every day. It can be anything but you could walk dogs for a nearby humane shelter or whatever.

4. What area? I assume USA. How close to an "active" area? Or at least a not-dead-area? The local guys probably aren't against it but more likely have no idea how to start/be successful and don't want to look foolish or fail.

5. If you don't have on spend $5 and get an account on ask.metafilter.com and ask specific questions about your parents anonymously to a wider audience than HN.

6. Maybe this can give you some concrete ideas the local guys can understand: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2566026

Have you considered immigration? Say move to a different country where there is plenty of startup capital, and your skill set might be in need and greatly appreciated. Try look into places like China, India and so on.

Entrepreneurial spirit? Needing to care for someone? Start your own senior care facility. Not wanting to wipe asses for the rest of your life? Create a patient database service and sell it to your competitors.

Sounds like it's time to start from 0.

Location: You need to move far enough away from your parents that you don't struggle with their every decision, but close enough to react to an emergency.

Parents: Do NOT attempt to rule their lives. They don't want it and you won't convince them. They have to figure it out for themselves.

Job: You need to settle down and find a 9-5 job. You have nothing with which to start another risky venture, so you need to find a way to pay the bills while you recoup.

Innovation: Feel free to innovate on the side, but pay the bills first.

You are a very strong person - give yourself a huge amount of respect for having the courage to write this.

Reading this has brought back a whole lot of painful memories - I have been almost exactly where you are. Though exact circumstances were different, I know how it feels to be trapped between two unmovable forces.

When I was there, I started giving myself homework assignments. Basically, I turned self care into an entrepreneurial endeavour. For example, I literally forced myself to:

- start training for a marathon (Kanamekun gave you some amazing advice - physical exercise increases both dopamine and serotonin levels)

- start lifting weights three times a week (strength training is a great tool as you see small improvements constantly. For me, it was also a great opportunity to let out a lot of anger)

- keep a (private) journal and write a minimum of 500 words a day. Sometimes, my 500 words consisted of, "I hate my life and I want to die" repeated over and over again until I hit 500.

- start working on one small project that I always dreamed of doing but never had the time

Needless to say, I was in a really bad place and, if you want brutal honesty, I can say that I am a little surprised that I came out the other side. I found that these four pieces of homework built momentum and eventually I had enough momentum to get out of the pit.

Best of luck, I will be thinking about you, and if you need someone to talk to, just ask and I will put up some contact information.

You're strong and you're not alone.

"no tech scene, no innovators, no night life, no forward-thinking, no excitement."

Sounds to me like a blank canvas and opportunity to be a big fish in a small pond. Your town not being cool enough isn't a good excuse. It's like blaming a chair for making you sit in it.

If you are a true entrepreneur and have the ambition, you'll hustle up make things happen. In the meantime, lower your standards and take the next job that's offered to you.

I think you need to take care of yourself before you can take care of others. Even if you are very close to your parents and don't want to "abandon" them, the most immediate thing you can do is find a job that will give you financial and mental stability - you probably underestimate what it is you are able to bring to a company, and if you are willing to start somewhere with a clean slate there are probably a lot of job opportunities around. You'll then be in a much stronger mental state, and will be able to look for ways to a)help them transition to a retirement home b)pay for someone to help them take care of themselves c)incorporate them into YOUR life, by inviting them to live with you in the future for example. You need to find a purpose for your own life, and it is clear that you do not share the same "apathy" which you are finding in this new environment - therefore staying there can only lead to disappointment. If in the short-term this means disappointing your parents, as sad as it is to say, they won't be around for ever, and disappointing yourself will have a much longer-lasting negative impact. Take care.

Sounds like you should get one of those 9-5 jobs and let your parents figure their own stuff out. If they ask for help, go for it but it's their choice. They are adults after all.

mattman, I have been through something very similar. I'm a long time developer who has made great sacrifices to put my own plans on the back burner and move back to my hometown to care for my mother with Alzheimer's. It is the most important thing I've ever done. We are both doing exactly the right thing. You should be proud.

A few thoughts...

I have no idea who I am anymore professionally

You are the same person you've always been. You have lost nothing. It may not seem that way right now because you haven't exercised your work muscles for a while, but what we do, like riding a bike, is NOT forgotten. It just needs to become active again. Once you start working again, you will remember pretty much everything and you will most definitely remember who you are professionally.

In addition, one of the most important qualities for anyone in our field is not just what we know, but how well we can learn new stuff. You have already done this; you will do it again. Your skills may become a little outdated but it doesn't matter. You will learn new stuff just like you've done many times before.

I had to move back home to a relatively inactive area - no tech scene, no innovators, no night life, no forward-thinking, no excitement.

Ten years ago, this may have been a problem, but now you can let the wonders of modern technology help overcome a lot of these issues. Use Hacker News for your tech scene, innovators, and forward-thinking. Frankly, these things are overrated in real life. Not so sure about night life; you'll have to find a way to solve that one.

If you have too much trouble finding appropriate local work, remote options are wonderful for people like you and me. Use one of the many remote opportunity posts here on Hacker News to find something. Anyone reading this with a remote opportunity for mattman should contact him off-line to explore the possibilities. mattman, you should fill out your profile to help others help you.

As far as your parents are concerned, please understand that there are incredible options available to you and your family. Attendants can come to your home. There are wonderful adult day care centers. And most importantly, assisted living and nursing homes are NOT to be avoided; they should be embraced if they are the appropriate option. Moving my mother into a nursing home was the best thing we ever did for all concerned. We just didn't realize it until after we had to make the move.

There must be all kinds of resouces in your community, including financial. You just have to go out and find them. Your parents are your new start-up. Your goal is NOT to take care of them; it must be to be an entrepreneur and put people in place to do that for you. I don't know where to start in your community, but get started. Ask anyone and have them point you to the help and the money you are entitled to. We all paid in for this; now is the time for you to use it for what it was intended. Don't let your parents talk you out of what you must do, the roles have been completely reversed. Now is the time for tough love. Do what you must to make this successful for everyone.

Forget about the rest of your family. If they can support you, great. If not, ignore them. They don't matter. Please understand that this advice comes from hard-earned experience. Don't make the same mistakes as me and expect more from others than you're likely to receive.

You are doing the right thing and you will come out of this stronger than ever. Keep your head up, do what you have to do, and eventually get your life back. Contact me off-line if you wish.

Best wishes, mattman!

  fill out your profile

Develop internet marketing skills.

Your situation with your family sounds terrible, but I think one important thing you should realise is that you are NOT responsible for their well-being. The desire to help is both understandable and laudable, but you should not confuse it with obligation.

Ultimately each of us makes our own choices about our lives (even if that choice is to depend upon others - many make that choice without consciously realising it), and in this case it sounds like your family are choosing not to improve their situation, and also trying to make your life choices for you. I have a friend with similar familial issues and from experience I would suggest that you at least enforce some boundaries so that you can live your own life successfully, and if they won't play along with that, consider that you may have to leave them to fend for themselves and forge your own path elsewhere.

We only get one, short life - please don't spend it in the service of people who don't appreciate what you're giving them, or actively obstruct your efforts to help and improve your own lot.

Their situation is NOT YOUR FAULT. Repeat that every day until you believe it - if you want to help them, of course do so, but make it a matter of choice and try to do it in a way that doesn't ruin your own life.

I just accidentally deleted my post, but here's a rewrite.

Constraints: - little/no capital required. - location independent, or available at your current location. - must provide enough income to service/remove debt. - should provide a routine.

Assets: - can do "everything but coding", with most experience in a tech sector - a reasonably large amount of free time.

Possible opportunities: - sales, for either a local or a remote company, either in-person or on-line. any product. - consulting (niche yourself and show you're really good at one of your many skills, and pick something that can be sold without always being at the client site.) - what else can you do?

I'm attempting to strip away the emotional baggage from the situation, to make it easier to see what might be possible. Maybe that could help.

I'll second the Learned Helplessness - your strategy currently seems to revolve around changing your parents, changing your immediate family and changing your town in order to stablize your life. Unfortunately, though other people can change, they can rarely (if ever) be changed by others. You need to stop focusing on the townspeople, the parents and the family, and start focusing on the thing you can change - your circumstance-strategy and your goals.

Here are a few things to consider, and some hard questions:

#5 - Why are you drowning in guilt, what have you done to feel guilty about? Your business failing? Your inability to support others who are not supporting themselves? Is your guilt misplaced, should you really be feeling responsibility?

I ask because guilt has a downward affect, responsibility upward - if you feel guilty that you can't support your family, you continue to sink into depression as you continue to fail. If you feel responsible for supporting your family, you find yourself needing to do just that and rising to goals that will fulfill that responsibility.

In regards to #2, I would consider this a cop-out. If there are no leaders, then you lead. If there are no innovators, then you innovate. If people want 9-5 jobs, then hire them, don't co-found with them. I realize that being in an "active" area can help in networking and support, but it also comes with disadvantages - competition for those same resources, false prophets and snake-oil salesmen, superstition-based strategy "Only 21 year olds can innovate, you need a 21 year old!", and it's own built in (false) positive-feedback loop. In my experience, "safe" or "inactive" areas are also usually somewhat economically depressed or limited - they rely on a factory or a set of services (hospitals, trucking depots) to supply most of the jobs. This can be a golden opportunity for an entrepreneur: there are probably lots of people there that need jobs or are working dead-end or low-wage jobs that would love a new business to open up in their neighborhood.

#4 Time to break the chain. If your whole family suffers from social-anxiety, it's time to ease them in to some new relationships. People need friends, and families need anchors. You can't do something creative or risky when you're floating anchorless. Your family needs to join the community, even if they do it awkwardly or slowly. My suggestion is this: choose an activity, sport, hobby or interest that at least 3 of your family share. I'm talking things like hiking, climbing, reading books, video games, sailing, motorboating, motorcyling, bicycling ... whatever it is that a few of you like to do. Find a local club that's related and join it. If there isn't one, start it. In fact, that may help you get your business chops back - running a small community club. Either way, you need to get your family "out there" and slowly the relationships will start to build. Once they have a few friends, they'll feel anchored to their community, their lives won't feel so out of balance, and taking risks will not seem so dangerous.

#3 I've never been faced with this situation so I'm not sure I can respond well. I'm tempted to say that if they don't want your help or won't admit they need it, perhaps you should let them make their own choices and back off.

Finally #1 - have you considered bankruptcy? If you're being smashed by crushing debt, the contracts you signed with those lenders hold escape clauses for you and them. Perhaps it is time to exercise yours?