I figure I could be completely transparent here and hope others could help me out. I found that because of the Pandemic and my retail work I find it hard to move on for fear of not having options because of where I reside/lack of work experience in my degree type. I am more than ready to take that step it's just the mentality of "everywhere is hiring" even though most jobs I have gone for that are tied to my Instructional Design studies tend to thank me for my time but ultimately don't move forward and it almost feels like a rut of settling in my retail work because as my father would say "A job is a job." and I should be grateful. I've always been raised on the mentality if you don't use what you've learned you end up losing it. I'm not really sure what to do anymore as I'm still just starting out and would love some advice on this.
Even though "everywhere is hiring", the competition is still FIERCE, so don't discount your skills. You might want to assess where you are strong and where you are weak, ask for feedback from your interviewers, network in the community you want to go into, and see where you can improve. You may need to supplement your retail work with some side gigs in the area you want to go into to show that you can do the work.
Thank you so much for the advice! I never knew I could get feedback from interviewers