[Quiet Man Cometh]

One thing you can try, Woop, is to play up your age in areas where you can. When I applied for my last job, which was basic retail and at least half of the other employees (and other applicants) were younger than me, I made a point of mentioning that I had finished school and done my travelling and therefore intended to stick around in the workforce. This might make you look more attractive to an employer that might not want to have to hire and train more employees when the younger crowd heads back to school or runs off to Europe. It's something to try.

You sound like you're in a similar position to a friend of mine, who fosters birds. She managed to get a basic job at a bird hospital. It was a heck of a commute but it allowed her to start fostering in the first place once she had enough experience and her duties increased. It was an ugly job to start with, since she essentially started out cleaning cages and such, bottom rung stuff, but she did ultimately get somewhere. She plans to go to school for something vet related as well.