> my resume gets no hits
> Maybe someone will notice me there.
I'm not sure if expecting them to come to you is a winning strategy. But you could get someone to review your CV to see if the presentation of it can be improved ?
I also have more than 20 years of experience, and if anyone asks me more than a fleeting question on what I did in college, that would be a massive red flag for me. I feel that even if I'm new to a certain technology, my overall experience is helpful and valued. The grey beard perspective so to say.
And getting some experience with machine learning has never been easier. Play around with TensorFlow, or buy one of those Nvidia Jetson dev kits and follow the free Nvidia AI courses. And there's plenty of things on Coursera, fast.ai and the likes for more formal insights beyond experimenting.
Same with cloud, free tiers everywhere.
But it takes effort to learn these new technologies, and that is not always easy at an age where more life has happened than for a recent graduate. So we need to be a bit smarter and efficient at it, but it can still be done.
Edit: I actually checked your Linkedin that you posted in another comment. I personally don't feel it's a bad CV, but I can see how it might not be a CV for FAANG companies. And you are already doing my suggestion of learning the newer stuff.
But I've experienced two things that might apply in your case as well. You're self-employed, which tends to reduce the people reaching for employee positions as they might think you're not interested at all. Secondly, you seem to be working remotely, which reduces opportunities even further.
I'm just wondering if recruiters commonly reach out to experienced developers that are self-employed in a remote capacity with a strong history of real world applications. Maybe a recruiter here can chime in ?
But it does seem you could use some more networking.
Anyway, best of luck !