I am a programmer in Lexington. For more local gigs, I'd recommend checking out Tech After 5 if you're in one of the three major cities, or close enough. It is a casual bar meetup sponsored by larger businesses. It makes a great way to get local contacts in the IT industry. IT-ology is also a great resource in SC. They are a non-profit I volunteer with that focuses on pulling new talent into IT.

Remote work is hard to find even if you're pretty experienced. For a side project, I ended up starting up my own little business, but I started out looking for remote work. You could explore business backed open source projects, especially the smaller businesses and startups. Becoming a quality contributor for a program that you're passionate about tends to lead to recruitment offers.