I was in a similar situation and I would strongly recommend to leave your comfort zone completely regarding the language and the technology. Python is a great language, but not your only option. In companies Java and C# are very common - and the advantage of these languages might be, that you learn about interesting concepts, that you possibly would not have to learn in another scripting language.

My advice is to start working on a fresh open source project of any kind of new technology. By that I mean a piece of software you would use yourself (e.g. an image conversion tool), not something like "advent of code 2023" or pull requests for an existing framework. Focus on shipping something useful...

One thing I noticed for myself is, that a private / open source project will not help you too much to land a new job in a bigger company, if it is not something everybody knows. I could not convince potential employers of my Java skills, even though I had worked on a presentable project a lot. In smaller companies the HR people tend to listen a bit more :-)

As soon as you have something to show, try to get a foot in the door in a smaller (but promising) company desperately looking for developers. Most of the time there is at least one person you can learn from and working for 8 hours a day is a completely other level than doing something for 2-4 hours a day in your free time.