[Clyd3Radcliff3]

Well, the choice it completely up to you, if you are risk adverse because of family, debt, bills or whatever it's a point, otherwise you can't conciliate to be risk adverse and growing as an engineer at least during the first 7-10 years of work (unless your company investing you but doesn't seem do be your situation), you must take the risk and invest on yourself (trade money and safety for potential growing).

In the first case (you can't leave because of stability) i would consider to sneak into grey areas of your company where you can indroduce something new (new build system, refactoring and whatever), it will require more effort than usual and depending on the company is not 100% sure thy will reward you for this (consider the reward to be the task itself), this way can grow by applying those skills to real life problem, if you don't have obligations i may say, leave and find something else but keep in mind that in 99% of the companies you will find the same situation.

Anyway, side projects/blogging is what i would advice in every case, just a disciplined 30 mins a day makes the differece.