I had no college experience, but did manage to jump right in to a good I.T. job while I was still in high school, and from there into an even better I.T. job in another state where I made more money than I knew what to do with. (I've never been good with money, and didn't understand what "savings" meant.) I worked there until suddenly one day I went on a camping trip with family, came back, and decided I hated computers. I quit that job, and the industry.

Then the dotcom bust happened.

So, at about your age, there I am, living back with my parents. They at least were supportive, but it took me a while to get my feet back under me. I took some simple jobs, took up rock climbing as a hobby, eventually became a climbing instructor, learned a whole bunch of skills but got paid next to nothing.

Eventually all of the credit I had amassed during my previous life in I.T. ran out, and I was deeply in debt with not enough income to manage it. My parents had moved away, and I ended up moving with them. Again.

Not my proudest moment.

It took months, applying to nearly every job and place of business in the area, but eventually I got a simple retail job. I lied about my past experience so that they wouldn't tell me I was overqualified to operate a cash register.

I let my bank accounts and credit fall apart. There was nothing I could do about it but start over. So I did.

Eventually, I was ready to re-join I.T. and happened by dumb luck across the perfect job opening for me -- about 6 hours' drive away. I patched up my car enough to get me there, and took with me the bag of spare change I had accumulated over a year or so.

The boss and I hit it off, and I got the job. It was one of the most challenging jobs I've ever had -- I was a one-man I.T. department for a store & restaurant that had no budget for anything fancy. All patchwork, all the time. I had gotten pretty good at that by then.

I was homeless at that point and my car barely got me there, but I happened to have some friends in the area so I stayed on their couch and made up for it by cleaning while I was at home. My first paycheck got me living expenses, the second got me the new radiator that my car needed, and so on.

Several years later, I've gone through a couple more jobs (a step up each time), started my own business, my credit is slowly rebuilding, the business is supporting two other people. It's still a struggle every day, but it's an uphill struggle. Every year is better than the last.

So, if your friends are giving you a hard time, tell 'em to knock it the hell off. Or find new friends. You've made a mistake -- maybe, you won't really know for sure for years -- but you have an opportunity to gain experiences that others never will. If I had never been a climbing instructor, I never would have developed the people skills that I needed to be an effective manager, let alone a business owner. You don't know what the future holds, so there's no sense in admitting defeat yet.

I won't try to lie to you, the next few years could be rough. Real rough. There could be an awful lot of days where you don't want to get out of bed, you don't want to do anything. Depression certainly doesn't make it any easier -- I know that from experience, too. But, if you keep trying anyway, you may discover that your best days are ahead of you yet.

Also, you're really not an idiot. People that never take a risk rarely end up in great places in life. You took a risk, it hasn't worked out so far. But, you didn't know what was going to happen before you did it. An idiotic decision is one that you know is bad when you make it. Unless you have an unusual power of foresight, you're not an idiot for making the decision you made.

Keep working on the freelancing. Keep getting better, keep making connections with other people. You have to become very aggressive now; it's not like a regular job where somebody else is doing the marketing and management for you and setting a schedule. Learn to start recognizing little victories. If you made enough money this week to pay a bill that you couldn't pay last week, that's a victory. Learn to get good at operating within razor-thin margins. Make sure you take a real hard look at all of your expenses; people that aren't accustomed to this style of living often have expenses that they believe they must have. At one point, my expenses were literally: food, and gas for the car. And that was it. I had no bank account, I got my checks cashed at the grocery store, I kept the cash in my wallet with a little extra hidden at my crash space (because paranoia), and so I knew exactly how much money I had to spend and live off of. If I had an extra $20 come payday, that was a real good week.

If you're lucky enough to be in an area with good public transit, ditch your car. Those things are money sinks. The moment you can't afford your insurance or registration, you will get pulled over. It's like magic, really bad magic. And the fines and fees just pile up, and there are no sympathetic ears when that starts happening.

Let go of everything that you think you have to hold on to -- your sense of importance, of self-worth, anything that might be holding you back or keeping you from making the hard decisions that have to be made -- and just decide that you'll buy it all back later.

Then just take your life one day at a time for a while.