stuck between a job and a career

[samuraiblues]

Wanting to find a good job/career but having a hard time.
I seem to see the b.s. but I'm not smart enough to move past the b.s.

current predicament. was a teacher, the company went bankrupt, then had health trouble past 2 years.
considered going back to school to earn masters but teaching a sunken cost at this point
wanting to move into new career but struggling with employment gap and which job/career seems most sensible.
considered biostatistics pro: high paying, high status, high demand / cons: high learning curve, tuition costs, is it work i would even enjoy?
now leaning towards carpentry / home renovation; zero experience, like the idea of it being both blue-collar and creative.
saw a guy in a physical therapy office, an older gentleman still had work boots on, walking gingerly, speculated that must have worked his ass off and now has a fucked up back the rest of his life and the receptionist was giving him shit because had the wrong card. doesn't seem worth it.
worked with a lot of bad coworkers, now feel like good work culture is so important but also so hard to find\
talked with a number of college counselors, and social workers, but like asking for stock tips from a homeless person
I'm staring at a chessboard trying to predict every move while unable to make any decisive action.
Advice?

[ForeverWar]

You taught for a company, not a school or a university? Was it a technical institute that went under?

If you find carpentry interesting, pursue it. The old man whose body is giving out due to physical work and the old man whose mind is giving out due to mental stress are one and the same. The two pains are the same: everyone wears out and dies eventually, one way or the other. The only choice you can really make is how you spend the time before you inevitably enter that state of natural decline.

If building houses for people seems to have meaning for you, do that. If you try it and don't like it, then you've learned something about yourself. That information is well worth the time investment to experiment.

Don't allow your fear of becoming the old man with rickety joints to affect decisions that you need to make in order to even reach the "old man" state of existence. If you love what you do, you will work harder at it, and if you work harder you will be more successful. If you pursue what has meaning for you, then the sacrifices that cause you pain later on will feel worth it rather than feeling like a hollow waste of energy.

Hope that helps.

[tragikom]

Carpentry does not really equate to bad health unless you have an unbalanced strain on your body for a long time. Most jobs lead to chronic pains because of repetative motions and t's your own responsibility to mitigate/avoid damage when possible.

Restarting education to get into biostatistics seems a bit far fetched unless you are actually interested in that topic or have any skills related to that career.

I would recommend a job that is relatively easy to get into and which has an actual career path. Maybe programming if you're into that or maybe some type of blue collar work that allows for specialization later on.