[jobmatchbox]

Have you considered doing some mobile stuff, maybe iOS? That might translate better for you.

Are you near a major city? If so, which one? The job market there will shape the opportunities available to you there.

Just getting something built that you can show people is about as important as the language or framework that you choose to do it in. That said, the mainstream is Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python (usually with Django), and mobile stuff. You could do something with JavaScript paired with another scripting language and that would be good. If you don't have time to do any of that, maybe pick up a book on HTML5 Game development and build something with it. There is a lot you can do there.