However, I feel like I am stagnating career-wise. I also feel like needing to take a career break for at least 6 months, in order to overcome some mental and physical health issues related to anxiety, and to read some books I've never had the time for. I have enough savings to provide for my family in the next year.
What makes me question leaving my current job is the current state of affairs with the remote job market. The remote job posts on LinkedIn look rather different in comparison to 2017. I don't want to be an "outstanding engineer" in "a fast-moving team" that "disrupts industry X" and "champions best practices". I don't want to be engaged in the "whole product lifecycle" and in optimising the CI/CD pipeline. I have never practised AI/ML, either, and I am not overly excited about the current trend of generative AI.
What I do want is to leverage my 20 years of experience in actual old-fashioned programming. I know C11, Python 3, and have played with C++17 idioms. I know the Linux programming interface quite well. One of my hobby projects is a table-driven, hand-written shift-reduce parser for a toy language. Are there any "boring" remote jobs that would require a similar skillset, and if so, where do you find them?
"Stress" and "boring" don't describe attributes of a job. They describe how a person interprets and reacts to a job. What I find interesting and not stressful may cause someone else to experience stress and boredom. Some jobs and managers impose lots of demands, or create less than ideal work environments, and those conditions may cause more people to experience stress, but the stress still comes from the people reacting to the job that way, not as an inherent property of the job.
You might try freelancing. You can choose your customers, set your own pace, and probably won't have to work on-site. Freelancing can cause frustration and stress too, but in general you have more control over the situation than you would as an employee.
Everyone's experience is different, obviously. But when things have been boring that's also meant an organization that lacks ambition. That in turns meant leadership and management with less than stellar understanding of those roles. Talk about a feeling of career stagnation.