[schwartzworld]

Yes, I was very much in your shoes. I was 29 and had only ever waited tables or worked retail. I had no skills that paid and I never finished college.

I ended up going to massage therapy school, and I worked doing that for 6 years. During that time I began learning web development, mostly as a way to pass the time on slow work days. As I got better at development I got to a point where I could realistically see it as a career.

I began to focus on frontend development because I liked that I could work without dependencies, any computer with a web browser is good enough.

Massage is physical work and eventually I got tired of it. my second daughter was on the way and I wasn't going to be able to really make any more as an MT without starting my own business, which I wasn't interested in doing. I got serious about searching for dev work and eventually found something.

As a bonus, the 4 years of self study prepared me very well, and i actually enjoy the work. You'd have to to spend 4 years studying.