Into the uknown...

Firstly, not so much a question, more an explanation of my current situation and what's ahead for me. One week today I will officially be unemployed. I have always worked since leaving college in the year 2000, and the company I have decided to leave, I have been employed there 9 years. I work as a web designer, mainly working on small brochure sites for small businesses in the UK. It's very basic work, a little Bootstrap and responsive is a creative as it gets. It's Custom Cms and is basically a production line approach, cost effective timings and targets more than UX, client satisfaction and creativity. The opportunity to take a voluntary redundancy opened up in August, and I decided to go for it. If I backtrack a little to May, that is when I found Treehouse, and managed to supplement and expand my knowledge and one of the main influences on me making this next step into the unknown. I aim to learn as much as possible in the next 6-8 weeks (mainly JavaScript & PHP) , completely rebuild my portfolio from scratch, I have two or three sites to build up from contacts in the industry - all of this leading up to a full on assault on the front end designer job market come Christmas. I would be interested in hearing anybody's similar stories, experience or advice if this sounds familiar. Making the decision to leave wasn't easy (it's a safe, above average wage, I have a house and two young children) - but ultimately I think it's a great opportunity as working on more advanced and bespoke websites and applications is what I want to do, and at the age of 35 I feel it is the right time to do it. Would just like to say thank you to Team Treehouse for making this educational resource so accessible, the content is amazing and with dedication and hard work - I believe you can help me move forward in the direction I want to go in. Sorry for the long message and thanks if you read it all!