Greetings and salutations

If you can get your old character back it will speed things up tremendously, just with unlocks and stuff. If I were you I'd reactivate, start your abyssea stones generating, go to the past and join a nation, then get your Voidwatch stones generating, then head down to B. Oubliette, join a leech killing party (get the book page for the exp bonuses) and get yourself to 99 (doing all the LBs and stuff).

By the time you've done that you should have some stones ready for you so you can do some work in Abyssea. And although it might sound counter-intuitive, if you had your mages nicely skilled, you could probably buy some half decent AH gear and start working on voidwatch as well. If you joined a [bastok/windy/sandy] city climb you'd be fine as long as you are decently skilled up and have your spells. Just look up the procs.

You might even get lucky with one of the few nifty pieces that come from the city tiers. In fact I'd almost suggest working on Voidwatch city clears before Abyssea because you can buy voidwatch stones if needed (unlike abyssea), and it will get you a decent supply of cruor to start out with when you hit abyssea - so you will be able to unlock fluxes and stuff.