So after spending 10 years living abroad and ministering to people's spiritual needs, I'm facing some big changes in the upcoming year.

My 6 year old son has cerebral palsy. Spastic quadriplegia if that means anything to you. Part of the reason that we chose Guadalajara for our second term was because of the excellent medical care available here. We've been very satisfied after two major hip surgeries and countless therapy sessions, etc. Unfortunately we're finding that as he gets older, we're unable to meet his cognitive, emotional and behavioral needs here, mostly because of the language barrier. Because of this, we've made the decision to return to living in the US.

Because our healthcare system is so screwed up in the US, I'm stuck in the weird position that to provide for my son's needs, I need to either make a decent salary, or be poor enough to be dependent on the government to meet all his needs. I can't be in the in-between land or we will go broke and he will suffer. This means that most religious ministry positions are not an option for me, because contrary to what many believe, most of these positions come with very modest salaries and require a fair amount of self-denial. I'm ok with the self-denial, but refuse to sacrifice my son's future because I can't provide for his needs.

If you're still with me, hang in there...I'm coming around the the request for advice (or just skip to the last paragraph).

So this means that I'll most likely be rejoining the tech sector after a 10 year absence. Honestly, I'm not sure where to start. I spent my time as a developer doing database app development for school management, but due to circumstances beyond my control, that was primarily in MS Access as a front end and MySQL back end. Ain't no one looking for MS Access 2000 developers . Also did a fair amount of web development using a LAMP platform and a bit in the early days of AJAX. Primarily using the ExtJS toolkit, which is now Sencha. Also did the server setup and maintenance, both Windows and Linux for a small office, but nothing special and I don't have any special skills there other than Linux literacy. I have a little experience with setting up our IP telephony system with Asterisk server and SIP clients around the country. I've done a fair amount of network installations including long-distance wireless links. So all of that to say I know a bit about a lot of things, but I don't specialize in anything, and I've been out of the industry for 10 years, so I'm really stale and behind the times. I'm not interested in getting into developing blockchain or AI stuff. I'm just not that hardcore of a programmer.

I'm not moving back until next April, and I'll have at least a couple months after my return to transition, so I have 8-9 months before I'll be hitting the job market in earnest, although I'll probably start applying selectively earlier. I'm going to be living in Columbus, OH, which has a very healthy job market, so there are plenty of positions available. But my resume needs some work, since I've only worked for 2 companies in the last 18 years, and the last 10 were as a missionary. Doesn't really wow the HR folks.

So I'm looking for some advice on what I can do to make myself more marketable. Perhaps courses or certifications that I can take online. In the old days, it was MCSE or Cisco or Redhat, but I have no idea where to start these days. I'm not a real creative type but I like solving problems and research, so I think I'd like to end up more in server administration, networking, helpdesk or something along those lines, but I'm really open to pretty much anything to get my foot back in the door. So do you guys have any suggestions on where to start?