>During dinner last night my wife said she wants me to focus on finishing a Bachelors and then a Masters starting next year. She said she doesn't care if I don't work during that time. She feels this will be good for me mentally and that it will/might bring opportunities to the table at one point or another.

First? I'd argue this is as much a relationship issue as a career issue. Treat it as such. When you are down, and relying on your support network to help you out, remember that you are relying on your support network to help you out and act accordingly. I mean, every relationship is different, and I can't tell you how to act in yours, but be conscious that you are using your support network.

(this can cause problems for you as much as it can cause problems for other people; accepting help can be hard. But either way, it's something you need to come to terms with.)

Next?

>My current view is that my only way out is through entrepreneurship. I need to keep trying until I hit upon something that works. I know I have a few potentially good ones but I don't have enough money to launch them correctly. I have to boostrap from small ideas to larger ones.

See, after a business failure? I really like to work for other people. Usually when I get a full time job, people think I'm pretty great, and generally I make more money working for other people than for myself (Apparently, I am not a particularly competent business person.) Anyhow, working for other people tends to rebuild both my damaged self-esteem and my damaged financial situation.

Another thing? Unless you are going for VC? Now is the worst time to bootstrap (unless you are selling to the VC funded... and if you plan on selling the company, rather than selling a product to the VC funded? I suspect you are too late on the bandwagon.) - It is difficult to compete with people who have VC and don't immediately need to make payroll.

So yeah; were I you? I would focus on contracting and/or on getting a regular job.

Now, I live in Santa Clara, not Santa Clarita, but from what I've seen? there are a lot of old guys in the embedded systems market. Can you handle VHDL or the like? Can you handle contracting?

I'm assuming that your contacts are stale or otherwise not all that useful. (First thing? call everyone who worked for you in the past. I've found that ex-employees generally think more of me than I think they ought.)

If you really don't have contacts (or want easy work... in my experience, if I get a job through contacts, I actually have to /work/ - if I can attract a random recruiter, usually the standards are way lower.)

That is... honestly, I don't know exactly what it is. I have really, really good luck with recruiters, and I don't know why.

Part of it is that if a recruiter spams me about a job I'm qualified for (and it is spam; none of them put any effort into vetting me first, as evidenced by all the offers I get for jobs that I'm obviously unqualified for) I respond.

But... part of that is that I'm on the recruiter mailing lists, and my resume kicks off the keyword searches. I don't know why or how this happened. The last recruiter who contacted me (I wasn't interested, but I referred him to a friend who got the job.) He said that he found me on Dice... but I haven't been active on DICE for at least four years, so I don't know if the guy was lying or if the net was just that wide.

I've even gotten jobs responding to craigslist ads (posted by body shops.)

But yeah, I... don't really understand why I seem to have such luck with recruiters. But, body shops and recruiters are a good way to go if you are down on your luck and need to get your foot back in the door.