Edit: this occurred to me after posting and may be more important than anything else: have you entirely stopped drinking (or using any intoxicants/drugs should

Edit: this occurred to me after posting and may be more important than anything else: have you entirely stopped drinking (or using any intoxicants/drugs should IL join the legal pot states)? If you have a history of getting drunk enough to show terrible judgement but haven't stopped drinking, then you're still showing terrible judgement. --- Well, stay away from financial and medical - both are going to have background check requirements that may also explicitly bar felons. Anything handling cash or card payments is likely also out based on PCI. I think the two things I'm going to suggest are setting up a company or at least a DBA (so searches are on the company name not yours) and focusing on things you can do that are outside company networks. Assuming you have technical skills appropriate to HN and some level of design skills, website development may be a place to start. Since you're in Chicago, I'd consider going to WordCamp Chicago in April - it's cheap and informative, even if you start out with static site generators and not WordPress (which has concerns of its own like needing updates and maintenance).