I'm currently working part-time, but really don't like the work I'm doing (bad development practices, boring work, bad pay, making no progress as a developer, ...). I've been looking for a new job for more than 6 months but got no real offers. I got some interviews, but didn't get a job (I admit selling myself is not my strong side). Where I live the economic situation is bad and job market pretty slow, so few companies are hiring at the moment.

I have a CS degree, cca 4 years of experience developing internal enterprise software projects, mostly with .Net (but no publicly available work to show off with). I don't think I'm some kind of super "ninja-rockstar" programmer but I believe I'm competent enough (I solve problems, get stuff done, follow good practices, read programming blogs, follow tech trends, have 2K reputation on StackOverflow).

I'd really like to work on something more exciting, where I could solve interesting problems and develop cool new products with modern technologies, somewhere where good development practices are encouraged, somewhere in a more startup-like, product oriented environment.

I'm really not sure what to do next, what to focus on to improve my options. Here's some ideas I'm considering about what to try next. Should I

-try and build something cool myself (don't think I'm ready to start my own startup just yet)? -find some open source project and try to contribute? -try to find some work on freelancing sites? -learn some new technologies that cool kids are using today or improve existing skills? -try to learn/improve some other (non-programming) skills? -look for a job more aggressively, try some foreign job sites, go to community events, meetups,...? -some other stuff that I didn't thought of?

So I'd really like to hear your opinion on what should I focus on. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.