ConsulCaesar: This was me not so long ago. The best advice I was given was that, if you do nothing, nothing will change. Taking a few minutes every day scouting for job offers (even if you don't get to apply because they are not what you're looking for) is at least doing something and a first step, and will let you feel you are starting to take charge of the situation. Just never give up. It took me a long time, it wasn't easy at all, but in the end I managed to climb up the well.
matterbandit: Thx for the encouragement! I appreciate it. Simple words but so true: "if I do nothing, nothing will change". I will tell myself this whenever I feel discouraged with job hunting. Funny thing is that I'm quite a skilled guy with excellent work experience, very competent and qualified... but the *one* thing I truly suck at is job hunting! LOL! I have yet to master that skill. ;)
I used to be in a rut not that long ago as well. I actually like my job and the pay isn't bad either, but I used to live in an expensive region (for reasons beyond my control) and had a pile of additional expenses regularly thrown on top of that, so despite the decent earnings, I pretty much spent every waking moment working. All of my friends lived 200 km away anyway, so it's not like I had anything to keep me busy otherwise. I did have the advantage of knowing that things would change on their own one way or the other - I just didn't know how long it would take and whether that change would come from a negative or positive life change. That was pretty harrowing as well.
But I digress. Job hunting is indeed difficult, and the best advice I can give from personal experience is to Fake It Till You Make It. You seem to have the advantage of knowing your strengths, which is invaluable - you just need to figure out how those strengths can help you in whichever job you're interested in. It doesn't have to be anything terribly specific, but just giving it a little think before an interview helps. "What are you greatest strengths and weaknesses for this job?" is a pretty common question in job interviews here, and while I never tried to deny my shortcomings, I found it helpful to try to make the best of them. For instance, I am pedantic to a fault - so I sometimes focus a bit too much on the irrelevant and might take longer to get started on some tasks, but you can then be fairly sure that those get done to the best of my abilities every time. Be honest with yourself, but don't think that all supposedly negative characteristics are completely negative in every circumstance.
And really, Fake It. A self-induced confidence boost may sound superficial, but it goes a really long way, because people (usually) can't see beyond it. I practiced speaking by going through typical job interview questions, sparring out some responses by saying them out loud to my microwave oven (really) and listening how they came across. Got my hair cut, wore the really tidy shirt I had on when I got married, clipped an expensive-looking (gift) pen conspicuously to a pocket and handed it to people if they needed to write something down and had forgotten theirs. Took my Neat Messenger Bag(tm) with me, kept my papers stuck to a clipboard as if I carried the thing around everywhere I went. Boy, did it feel ever so silly at the time. But it landed me a job that I seriously doubt I would've got if I had just gone in as myself instead of as this billboard of what I could - and would - become.
Of course, sometimes it's nice to just stay put for a while - there are things in life that we can affect ourselves and things that we cannot, but just because you can affect something doesn't mean you'd necessarily have to go for it immediately. It's just that others are unlikely to do it for you no matter how long you wait.