From the perspective of a BigCo recruiter, your background doesn't put you into a simple, desirable category - this can be overcome, especially when times are good, but it's harder when expansion isn't happening.
Your options are essentially:
1) keep on getting those recommendations, working for non-tech people, etc like you did before, that can still work and is viable.
2) leetcode, make yourself fit in and conform as a replaceable cog
3) be a team lead / manager, where your experience and focus on the output is seen as an asset
The basic issue is that the market does not value ICs with 10 years of experience, interesting languages, personal projects, etc... those are not _bad_ things, but basically they want leetcode people with a few years of experience, or people to manage those people.