Got my first job out of uni 1 year ago...what/where is the next rung?

So after 15 months of searching, I finally got my first job out of grad school 1 year ago. It's a contract job that has been pretty good so far...I'm a software engineer at a big corp working on the backend of my group's platform.<br><br>I'm starting to wonder where my next career step should be. I'm currently reading Pragmatic Programmer, and the principal engineer at my company recommended Clean Code so I'm planning to read that/working my way through the recommended 10 books from Pragmatic Programmer. I also just got a wsl so I can run/learn bash instead of cmd.<br><br>I'd love to move to California w/ my girlfriend but we're living in Michigan and the start of the pandemic happened when I got my job...so she still hasn't visited my town (it's like a 20 minute drive to work, super easy living). We've been trying to schedule a time for her to come out/look for apartments, but it's all just on hold because of the current lockdown 2.0. Especially now that I'm starting to feel better about my job, I feel like I'm just trying to hold out living like this...1 month here, 1 month there, living with roommates etc. We're also talking about moving in together so it would be nice to feel like I have a solid career going.<br><br>What are some steps I can take/what skills can I get to help me take the next step?/where is the next step? From what I've heard, California is waaaay more competitive than here, so what kind of skills would I need to succeed out there...should I just stay Michigan...what are some other good tech hubs that would be easier to get a job at?