no problem, and I hope you don't interpret my other post about Chicago musicians as too snarky...I didn't mean it in that way. I know getting by as a musician is tough and loneliness is tough and combined it can send you to bad places...been there too.
What I have found in life is that the times that were the best/easiest for me were the times I just buckled down and focused on work and not my inner monologue and fears. Good things will come.
If your main goal is production I can't offer as much advice as that isn't my area of expertise...but I bet at least some of the high level ideas are the same. As with most industries you will get a lot farther on connections than on luck/skill alone. so if you can start playing/teaching and meeting people that have ins with studios and stuff you will have a better chance at a word of mouth recommendation for an internship/job than you would by just showing up with a resume.
Definitely start circulating resumes to every local music store that does lessons you can find that you would reasonably be able to commute to. If you can start teaching 5 days a week with a decent roster of kids (knowing full well that summer sucks for teaching and you will lose a good chunk of your students) you can get by with that and gigging during the day and on weekends.
There is nothing "cool" or glamorous about it but if you can play the right type of music then getting into the cocktail hour (or ceremony) wedding gig scene can get you decent pay. People planning a wedding go into it expecting to spend a lot of money and you can capitalize on that. After building a bit of a name for yourself you can easily pull down decent cash. I used to have a guitar duo that would do those types of gigs and we could easily get $1000 for a cocktail reception...so basically $500 each for an hour or two of playing plus set-up/take-down time and transportation time...usually also free drinks and food which is a great savings as well! Even before getting to that point (and if you hustle hard you can get even more money than that for sure) you could easily pull down a few hundred bucks for 2 hours of playing. Do that a few times a month combined with 5 days a week of teaching and you will survive. The beauty of wedding gigs is that the more of them you do the more of them you get offered. Corporate parties are the same way. Small scale house party political gatherings...etc etc etc. make friends with other musicians working the same scene...when you can't take a gig you get offered throw it to them as a favor...they will return the favor back to you and now you have other musicians recommending you to people. Everything builds on everything else.