decided that a tech school or trade school is the way for me to go!

Then you'll need an extra-strong portfolio and an extra-good cover letter. Good luck!

This ^

I'm going to stress the importance of this as I don't have a computer science degree. It's pretty much impossible to get an interview if you do not have this on your resume or 2-4 years of actual work experience in the field.

This is from personal experience, I applied to pretty much everywhere I could that had openings and out of over 100 resumes sent out I received about 6 responses, 4 of those responses telling me I didn't meet the requirements for the job or I didn't have enough experience. I ended up having to get into the industry through QA, after 4 years in QA I am finally programming because I was given the chance at one of the companies I was working QA for.

Essentially I could of skipped 4 years of doing what I didn't want to do by getting a CS degree instead of not going to a proper university, as landing a job requires you to at least get an interview.

I figured that becuase I have a steady and great paying job now, I can take my time to build my portfolio and whatever else I need to. I'm in no rush to get into the industry, but I can't see myself doing what I currently am for the rest of my life.

" It's pretty much impossible to get an interview if you do not have this on your resume or 2-4 years of actual work experience in the field."

That's because it pays a lot of money, it's indoor work, hardly anyone ever gets killed or buried alive while doing it and as a result, everyone is convinced they'd be really, really good at it. And so an easy filter to tell all the people who would definitely be really really good at it from the handful people who might actually be is "did they graduate from somewhere I've at least heard of or have they been doing this for a while now?"

And even then easily 9/10 of those people won't actually be any good at it...

Out of curiosity, is changing jobs really not an option?