This. Good Advice, and easily accomplished.
At my previous employer, we had a guy come in for a programming position who was morbidly obese. Pleasant fellow, and competent, he just had a hand-to-mouth problem. Fortunately, I wasn't on the programming team, I just heard all this over the water cooler.
He came exceptionally highly recommended by a trusted member of senior management. That's the only reason he was hired, and he *still* had to go through a six-month 'probationary' period. I doubt that there would have been any question whatsoever, if he wasn't carrying an extra person's worth of weight.
Anytime you can take a bad break and turn it into something positive, it's a step that motivates you onward to even more accomplishment. Feeling good about yourself is a magnetic quality that others pickup on.
Many blue collar positions, unless supervision and etc., requirement more physical activity than engineering or white collar positions. In some ways, that can be beneficial both physically and mentally. Many of these positions pay well, compared to years past. Here, specialized maintenance personnel earn $35 and over per hour. That's 70K per year without any OT, and skilled blue collar worker positions are getting harder to fill.
Having electronics expertise is a lucky break for vwbug. Many new fields such as robotics, process controls, remotely controlled operations, and so forth are just beginning to proliferate in earnest.
Adapting electronic controls to real world applications is one of the top future fields to be engaged in. Some others are cutting edge medical, agriculture, and information security.
No doubt the economy is screwed through centralized control, social engineering, corruption and etc. But life still goes on and we have to find creative ways to adapt to the situation. It's called survival and it's something we've been lulled into a complacency about, at least those not reading FR. lol
Those who think the government will take care of them no matter what, will meet the same fate the millions who died last century met, I'm afraid.