[snakey]

Thanks so much for your advice! I agree, having the opportunity to use the language as part of your daily-work helps massively, and is one of the best but most difficult options to realize. I'm aware this will come with some sacrifices (pay reduction, longer hours to catch-up) which I'm willing to make while I become more competent.

As for the second point, that is a great suggestion. However, I'm very limited by my current working environment (regulation, corp. restrictions, etc.) so it becomes a little more difficult.

I believe I will just have to push very hard for option one and continue to study areas of interest in my spare time. I'm reading xv6: a simple, Unix-like teaching operating system which is helping me grasp some practical applications using C.