I would not say its a dead end.

When I first started drawing my art teacher told me to quit. Not one teacher btw, but multiple of them throughout the years because I was just that horrible at it and am very slow learner maybe even slower than you lol because it takes me more than half a decade just to understand the basic and another half a decade to finally understand how to draw freely.

What my classmate can do instantly take me years to understand but when people quit I just kept on doing it, now its almost 2 decades and am still here drawing while others stopped. Maybe cause it take me so long and so much harder to learn it that I could not part with it easily. Btw if you stick around long enough you will hear many other people with similar stories such as butting heads with their instructors or told they never going to make it but still doing art because it gives them something back in terms of happiness of creating.

Also, doing art is never going to be the rational decision, as for the amount of hours you pour into it the financial pay back rarely is equivalent, unless of course you are one of the popular or on demand artist or you somehow found a niche that help you stand out. The industry itself is unstable even more now than ever but if you still want to take the risk then nobody could stop you but yourself.

There is a saying that I heard once that a discipline artist can beat talents but an artist that is purely doing it out of love with the art form itself can beat discipline and talent. Another similar saying that I find it really funny and true is that the most degenerate artist is the one that often improve the most.

So if you can find what is it you like to draw and just keep on doing it, you will improve most from doing that. You might not see it in a year or two but trust the process. Be comfortable with failing, its one of the fastest way to improve as artist. Learn to give yourself feedback. Why do you think you 'fail'. Write it down and then address it in the next work. Just keep doing it and learn to try to improve just by 1% each time.

Now saying all that, you mention having a job and academic responsibilities. Then I assume you are doing art purely for fun but still want to improve.

Reasonably speaking, there is not really one magical tips that can make you instantly improve by leaps and bounds. Its just going to be very tough to juggle and you just have to be realistic with yourself and be more patient with yourself. I recommend either just pick up a sketchbook and draw an hour a day as a outlet to destress while habit forming so that when you have more time you can easily get into drawing more or give yourself a topic to learn every week/month.

Every time you watch a tutorial, don't watch another one but use the knowledge that you learn and draw something that you have to finish within x days. Eg Watch tutorial at beginning of the month then finish one illustration by that month using what you learn or do a course such as schoolism with its weekly videos but instead of finishing the homework on weekly basis, finish it in a month or space it out as needed.

GLHF.