There are two possibilities here: either you have an intrinsic desire to refresh your skillet or you don't. The external motivation (get a better job) is clear.

There are two possibilities here: either you have an intrinsic desire to refresh your skillet or you don't. The external motivation (get a better job) is clear. But the drive to make it happen has to come from inside. Programmers have many opportunitues to go way outside our comfort zone while still being a programmer. Cloud deployment. Mobile apps. Data science. Responsive CSS. You're used to being the top dog, so be an absolute beginner at something for once. Or not. You might discover that you just don't like programming anymore. That's fine too. There's more than one recruiter in the world. Keep updating your resume and eventually more will notice you. But try not to mention all the legacy system stuff.