i'm 28 and i'm (still) working a dead-end job. i finally scraped up enough for community college classes, and i'd like some career advice. currently i'm thinking of getting an associate's in either nursing or computer science. i want to get into IT, be it software or something else, and not exactly because i love it, but because of the lifestyle it may provide (more alone time, possibility of remote work, room for growth). however, i fear for job security and ageism very much, especially since i'm older, and any 21 year with a bachelor's and some talent can easily replace me, and because everybody and their mom is trying to get into tech for same reasons as i am. also i'm afraid of automation, chatgpt and the like, even though i don't know much about this stuff. thus, i thought about another career that one would think definitely has job security - healthcare. i thought about med school but i'd be at best 40 when i'm out of residency and earning the real physician salary, and i also have very little money at the moment. next i thought about nursing since there's a lot of subsidized programs that help with getting a nurse's education and because there's room for vertical (NP, CRNA) or lateral career movement (admin, teaching, healthcare informatics), but i don't enjoy physical labor (or workplace drama) and i'm told that nursing is incredibly demanding and exhausting.

my goal is to be working from home for a US company whilst living abroad in a 2nd world country and having a better quality of life, but i also can't be working these minimum wage jobs much longer. i'd have to go to school for at least 3 years for nursing (prerequisites + associate's), so i'd be 31, and 2 years for computer science (associate's), but i don't know how long i'd have to wait till i actually land a job, or whether i'd have to transfer and put in 2 more years for a bachelor's whilst working more shitty jobs to support this and probably getting into student debt or military reserves/guard to fund this, by which time i'll be 32-33. i'd also like to attain financial independence and retire as early as possible, and living in a cheaper country on US-based savings seems attractive.

any advice/point of view is much appreciated. i know i'm all over the place with this and that, but bear with me - i'm a child of divorce!