No one else has said it, so I will. Five years from now, you'll be five years older than you are today. From what you've told us, you're about 35. So you'd be re-entering the IT workforce at around 40. At that point, you'll be competing for jobs with newly-graduated upstarts who are half your age, and who will inevitably be perceived by employers to have just learned the stuff that's much more important than what you learned 17 years earlier and stopped practicing five years earlier. What's more, it'll be five years in the future, and the rate of change of all things in the world today is rapidly accelerating. (Toffler, et al.) So I think it's realistic to expect that it'll be difficult for you to pick up where you left off today five years from now. (I'm a 53-year-old American male, and I hate that what I'm telling you is true. I admit I'm painting a picture in very broad brush strokes. The point is, age matters.)