Got a little bit of good news. I got a call yesterday for an interview for a Legal Secretary position that I had applied to a while ago. I've applied to so many different gigs that I forgot all about this until they called me. I'm praying that I can get this position.
I've been in the process of starting my own business as well but the cost of getting up an running supersedes my income. For those that can't find a gig w/ some real great skills (transcription, coding, etc.) I would suggest looking into freelancing. I signed up for elance, haven't gotten any offers yet but I don't have any real skills aside from a little bit of legal knowledge and bare minimum coding.
To those w/ IT certs, are they worth it? W3 schools offer certs for $95 for things like HTML, PHP, JQuery, etc. and I was lookin into the CompTia certs but don't want to waste the money if they won't help me get into the field.