Ask HN: How to proceed?

I've been a professional programmer since 2000. I work remotely and I've had a number of accomplishments over my career. Always gotten positive feedback from coworkers/managers. I'd planned to change jobs at the end of 2015 and I also hit 40 recently. I've focused on remote jobs. I feel it is important to grow and aim above where I am currently at. My search started 6 months ago. I've submitted 35 applications. 14 received no response. 9 responded with rejections. 3 had screening tests (e.g. HackerRank). 5 had code challenges of 8-12 hrs. Of the 5, 2 followed up with just a rejection. 2 continued on to more interviews. I did a paid trial project for 1 company. I interviewed with 8 companies. 6 went multiple rounds and 2 made it to final round interviews. More details here: http://pastebin.com/R2BjGAiW. After many hours, stress & sacrifice, I am questioning my next steps. I assumed (based on the ‘hot’ the job market and many recruiter requests) I'd have offers in a month. I’ve never had such difficulty passing interviews in the past and it seems way harder than say 5 years ago. Seems like interviews are more geared towards evaluating junior engineers and deeply discount experience. Any advice on where to go from here? Should I just persist? Is this age bias? Should I use a recruiter like TripleByte? Should I switch to consulting? I’ve read comments that networking is key. Being remote I don’t get a lot of face time & my colleagues tend not to move often, limiting opportunities. Perhaps study CS fundamentals and interview with Google. I don’t want to relocate, but having it on the resume might help a lot. I could really use some wisdom on how to move forward. Anyone know of career counseling for people like me? Anything constructive that the community can offer would be greatly appreciated.