Hi - a bit of both life and contracting advice here please! I have been doing contracting for around two years now and currently live in London and still a remote role. I work with a specific software tool (no one would have heard of it but for the sake of this lets say its called ABC!) and Technical skills from ABC really aren't transferrable (except HTML!!!) - I spent my whole life on it! now its dying in the contract market.

I might have gotten a permanent job if I stayed in London just doing ABC. But I can't and really don't want to either. The reason I can't stay in London is both personal and money situation and possibly move somewere up north for a year and decide what my next move in Life is going to be!

I also want to move away from the "ABC" field and want to learn something new. Problem is I don't know what technical tool I should I get into! I am in my 40's and know nothing outside of ABC (for example, no nothing about Java, C or .NET / Python or Project management / Agile!!!)....

What do you suggest? My plan is to spend next year just studying something and may even get certified on something, then work in a permanent role for a year in that field and back to contracting. So that is basically no income for a year and just learning a year potentially just about enough money on basic salary and maybe get a proper contracting in the same day rate (assuming I am lucky in two - three years from now!) as I get now. So basically, I have start my life all over again in mid 40's.

So what do you suggest I get into?

Thank you!