hello_marmalade

I've been working for a long time now as IT Support, but it's never been my passion. I love computers and have been doing all kinds of things with them since I was 11 and even earlier. I ended up falling into IT Support as a career because I had the natural skill set basically from just troubleshooting my own issues constantly. That said while I'm making decent money I've never been satisfied with what I'm doing. Bluetooth connectivity issues and faulty mice were never what made me passionate about computers, and I want to move on to what does.

I'd love to get into development (I've been enjoying my time on my own with Scheme and Python) or even Linux engineer type stuff, but it feels like even though I've had the chance to do projects related to that occasionally, I haven't gotten enough that I can really be a competitive candidate for anything else. I don't have any college education either which I feel might put me at a disadvantage. I have in the past year however been able to get a lot of hands on real world experience with automating tasks using Python and handling API integrations and the like, which has been really enjoyable.

Would anyone have any recommendations as to how to move out of the business of fixing simple problems and into the business of creating interesting solutions?

Thanks!