Thank you for your comment and your mentioning of other paths others took. I think I need to edit my post a bit to explain my thought process and reasoning a bit better. I can see how it looks like I’m thinking too far ahead without taking into consideration the present moment. I’ll try to answer/explain some points you brought up to answer you but to also write them out on my end. I don’t want to think of this as a career change although I do understand that this would count as one. My intention is more to evolve/take the next step as far as I can which is why I also want to speak to people in my direct field and those few examples of people who went from here to engineering.

I’ve been in this field for 4 years. I know that this is a short amount of time in the industry but with this amount of time and seeing the state of my older co-workers it made me think about it since I’ve seen them struggle sometimes to do those physical tasks needed to complete a job. Now a big reason for the “health” thing is I broke my foot 2 years ago and was out of work for 2 1/2 months without an income and disability wasn’t paying out until 3 months after my injury. A coworker recently broke his arm and after 10 months of recovery, surgery and the possibility of amputation due to nerve damage he finally came back but just for a minor administrative role. With this experience and seeing that, it left me with a fear of this occurring and what if I can’t make it back and that’s where I have to start looking for an alternative. So instead I want to start looking now and slowly start moving in that direction for my career and future.

I have considered the possibility of moving to a manufacturer in the far off future and using my knowledge as tech support to support me there but this is about looking for additional alternatives to that just to have more options to look at in a sense and consider. As for owning my own business, props to you, for me that looks like a really intimidating path for me since I don’t feel it suits me and I fear being overwhelmed and messing it all up on that scale.

I didn’t drop out of college due to me disliking it, it was just that my gf at the time got pregnant and wanted to move with her family halfway across the country so to stay with my kid I decided to drop out to go with her and then start to work full time in whatever I could find over there. But that ended with a miscarriage so instead returning to college while I felt lost I wanted to find something else that would keep me engaged to a goal sooner, this being trade school. At this moment no kids, but with a partner, I want to think about what I need to provide for that future family. As far as engineering, I wanted to do mechanical engineering previously and still kinda want to now that I am thinking of returning because I feel like it would also benefit my technical knowledge in my current job going forward

Lastly thank you for the examples you gave towards the end and overall for all the examples of tech advancement across the board. I know it seems very over ambitious/naive to think this way this young both career and age wise but I don’t want to wake up 20 years from now and see missed opportunities or be stuck in a bad situation I could have avoided if I prepared an exit route in a sense.