Is it possible for a tech dummy to become a 'web developer'?

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I'm overeducated and underemployed. What little work I have right now sucks the big one. I'm below the poverty line, and the future's looking grimmer still. What do I want in life? I want a job where I can sit at home alone in front of my computer and do my thing, and where I get enough income to where I don't have to spend half my waking hours staving off an existential panic attack.

A techie friend of mine once wrote a blog post stating that any schlub can become a 'web developer.' You don't have to have been a Stanford compsci major or anything like that, you need only self-teach the relevant languages, hustle for a bit of work and voila! you're on your way. "You can make 70K a year!" Shoot, I'd be happy with less than half of that. 30K seems like a dream to me right now.

His post inspired me to start at Codecademy. I got halfway through Javascript before I stopped and started overthinking things, in true Aspie fashion. The questions I asked myself:

- Is this just hype? Am I wasting my time?
- Who the hell would pay *me* thousands of bucks to futz around on my laptop?
- Are these little fly-by-night online academies able to get a guy like me actual work? Or will it really just help me become a hobbyist and nothing more?
- Isn't there market oversaturation? If it's true that any bloke can get in on this, then aren't there too many blokes? Low entry barriers = too much competition for crap gigs. (That's why translation sucks now.)
- Am I actually capable of this? I've never been a 'nerd' or a 'geek' when it comes to computers. I use mine to surf the web, listen to music, write stuff, and not much else. I don't have a 'passion' for it, and I get pretty quickly bored by anybody who does. Tech/computers doesn't give me my jollies. My motivation is less that I revel in tech and more that I want to climb out of the pit I'm in. Is that sufficient motivation to do this?

I just don't know if it's a viable path, or if I have what it takes. As for my experience with Codecademy, I was humming along just fine. Although I found it frustrating at times for the same reason I always found math so frustrating: like in math, you get one little thing wrong and the whole thing's wrong! At least in the humanities, one bum sentence won't tank your entire thesis, know what I mean? But if it could lead to a better life, I mean truly lead to it, as in this whole thing is not B.S., I'd be willing to power through the frustration and do what I gotta do.

If it's not the right path, what other lines of work could I pursue?

You can do anything. Half the battle is won by deciding what it is that one should pursue.

That's what I'm trying to do. But to decide, I need information. I confess my ignorance and confusion.