My path was starting as a 1st line techie fixing day to day problems, then working up to 2nd, 3rd line, then into installations, and finally, where I am today, as a technical architect.
Age is still on your side. The biggest tip I can give is to avoid large corporations like the plague when you're starting out. I started at IBM, and was invisible. It was impossible to progress.
Look for job adverts from smaller IT service providers; they'll have customers with a wide array of technologies that you'll get to play with, that you wouldn't elsewhere. I went from having to fill forms in for a password reset to troubleshooting interesting technologies at a level IBM would never allow... And there was a continual trajectory upwards from that point.
Another thing I'd suggest is not bothering with the comptia certs everyone suggests on here. It's just as easy to get certs that actually mean something... Get some ms mcp's under your belt instead, or a basic cisco cert as someone else mentioned. Those Comptia certs are just pointless in today's world.
MS offer some free training days, and often thrown in a free exam the same day:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/events/training-days/
I'd especially keep an aye on the Azure ones, as they run regular events that give you the AZ900 Fundamentals exam for free. That's a basic introduction to cloud computing, but infinitely more useful today than any comptia cert. Get some azure experience and the sky is the limit... Literally paths for every type of IT job going, so you'd be able to learn the basics without pigeonholing yourself right from the start.
Good luck!
