How does one decide which industry to switch to?

Vagueness of vague in that question, but hopefully I can boil it down:

I’ve been job hunting for about 2 months now. Web Developer — WordPress, specifically, with 13 years of experience to back that up.

I left my previous job, during a natural disaster, where my boss showed all of his true colors about abusing his workers. Tension had been building all year already, and then he seemed to be one-upping himself during Hurricane Helene, for anyone familiar with that storm and what it did to Western North Carolina (where I live).

Without diving too much into detail on the above, between the job market saturation & general “ick” I’ve been feeling, I’ve been contemplating “do these skills translate to any other industries & positions.”

Because something is stopping me from doing the dang work, and it’s starting to get to me. The whole reason I even got that job in the first place, I remember it clear as day, when I was about 23, I was sitting in my parent’s spare bedroom, doing freelance work. I suddenly looked up from the project that I was doing, looked around, and went “what the f*** am I doing with my life?” and then set out for the next 3 weeks, building portfolios, building a resume, and building a really professional portfolio binder to carry around with me, and it got my hired on the spot at my previous place.

Where did that drive go? To just ask myself “what the eff are you doing?” and then suddenly the fire is lit.

Yet now? Actionable items that I can do, to put me in a better position for recruiters, or better position financially by working some freelance in the meantime, etc…and my mind and body simply refuses to do them 50% of the time. I have to “amp myself up” to literally just sit down, tweak my resume, send out more apps, and do some research on the industry to make sure I’m still relevant.

And it finally clicked today: “Yeah you’re cheesed at your ex-boss…but if anything that should fuel the fire…why are you looking at 100% actionable steps for your resume, and applying for jobs, and instead going “meh…watch an episode of something on netflix, and get back to it.” and then never getting back to it?”

What clicked was maybe there’s something subconsciously keeping me from fully wanting to dive back into a WordPress job. Clients are pains in the butt because they always — ALWAYS feel the need to fingerpaint all over a project, bosses usually are too with unrealistic expectations because they usually don’t know the tech enough to understand limitations, etc. and basically my mind finally went “If people would just respect developers like they respect a plumber or a HVAC guy, and actually trust that we know what we’re talking about and do have meaningful contributions that could be said to overall goals…all of this would be a lot smoother, and I’m tired of fighting that battle.”

But no, we’re the nerds that everyone else bats around with their egotistical career mindsets thinking that we’re just a pencil for them to use — regardless of literally any problem that we can accurately articulate to them and want to solve for them….in the end it’s more about them expressing their own “design” fingerpainting or what they feel the actual issues are in their metrics for why they’re not getting enough conversions, when I can sit there and point to something and say “we need to change this” and it gets blown off, because my job is “just to build.”…meanwhile I still end up with consequences because they focused on something that wasn’t needed, and now I’m being blamed for not fixing it….even though I tried to fix it by redirecting their attention.

So I’ve been wondering lately if I need to switch careers….but lost on how to do that without hitting a total reset button on everything. As soon as I do that, I feel like my resume is completely useless….I could do whatever courses I want to, any certifications, hell even entertained going back and getting another degree….but I’m 10 years older than the ones who would have already done that, and I can’t shake this feeling that if I do that, I’m going right back into the entry-level pool making less than $40k a year.

Does anyone have any tips/resources on what someone can do in these situations to figure out where to go next, without having to hit the total reset button as if you’re fresh outta college?

Things like figuring out where to go next (and what skills translate, productively in a way that recruiters see and recognize that), or am I just stuck as a WordPress dev forever unless I want to reset myself to $30k-40k/year for a few years and re-climb the ladder? (for reference, I’m at the experience level now, and my previous pay, where 6 figures is not farfetched)

Thanks in advance if anyone has any constructive advice on this.