[kaizensoze]

I think the first step is to realize how much NYC digital agencies charge and how much they're taking advantage of you at $55K. The agency environment is also the most demanding in that there is always an endless queue of projects to be done and the developers are interchangeable with a hot swapping of projects being quite common in which projects are just shuffled around between developers requiring you to quickly pick things up and become familiar with the codebase in order to fix bugs handed off to you.

On the other hand, finding a next gig as freelance can be a royal pain in the ass unless you have a lot of connections, but if you do, having a queue of projects and working remotely is the ideal situation imo as long as you maintain a decent social life.

For full-time, you can just pick something either based on the size of the company or what they do.