May I ask for more background? Who are you? I don't mean your name, although you might well grab a robe. I mean to ask who you are relative to your career. Are you just starting out? Switching careers? Moving up? What do you want to do? What kind of work? Sysadmin? Webwizard? Gamemaster? Maintenance is less glamorous than development but there's considerable demand. When do you want to get paid? Weekly paycheck? End-of-contract lump sum? Multiple tiny rivers of donations? Where do you want to work? IBM? Save The Whales? Canonical? Your living room? How do you learn best? Some hit the books, some go to school, some hack and hack and hack and hack and hack until they get it. Most important: Why write Perl, or for that matter, any code? Almost by definition, software is highly portable, which means you can always be replaced by somebody living in the cornfields or on the other side of the world; no matter where you live or how cheaply you work, there's always somebody who'll work cheaper. Nursing is a much more durable career.

I can think of many good answers to all of these questions but they're not your answers. I wouldn't try to suggest anything to you without knowing more. I do think that by the time you've answered these (and similar) to your own satisfaction, you'll know where to look for the hard info you need.

Fair is fair and I'll answer in my own voice, just to illustrate. I'm an old hardware dog who always wrote a little code, just to make all the lights come on; I've moved on from engineering entirely and now I tutor Math. I use Perl mostly for personal amusement, although my current project is a web application that may even produce a revenue trickle. I don't expect to make much money doing this and whenever the cash comes, however little, is soon enough. I work in my own place or wherever the wifi is strong. I learn best by tackling hard stuff, building a real project, and bearing through roadblocks; also, I read everything in sight or online; plus, I ask directly when I can: I really appreciate a place like PerlMonks where there's some give and take. I took up the study of Perl because it's a real challenge. Anything to keep the old gray cells firing.

One piece of advice: Read the basics thoroughly. By "basics", I mean absolutely all the perldocs included with the standard distribution, plus the entire POD for any module you plan to use, plus every single page of Perl Best Practices (Conway, 2005). By "thoroughly", I mean that you should start anywhere, read randomly until you get the gist of the whole thing, then go back and read from start to finish, at least twice. Unless you're unusually brilliant, each reading will reveal new depth. Also, boning up will avoid peremptory look-here-dummy answers when you ask specific, dumb questions (as I have).

Oh, and bookmark PerlMonks and return daily. Spend an hour in study and meditation. The Light will come.