Career paths when your starting from the edges

So i've held off on asking this for awhile, as it seems to be a question that would just answer itself given enough time and effort, but what the heck. First off, excuse the extensive preamble, but it's relevant, and i have a feeling it describes a few peoples experience not just my own.

So i'm 29, never made it through uni, basically through a lack of any kind of work ethic (there were always bands to play in and beer to drink), so non-graduate i guess you'd call it, but around 5 years ago i decided i in fact wanted a career, and a job that stimulated and inspired me.

Cue the next 5 years of basically retraining myself to have a work ethic, to be dedicated to learning on the job and in my own time, and generally putting in the hours that i should of the first time round when i was 18-20. Now i'm working as a sysadmin/network engineer/support desk jack-of-all-trades in a small hosting company.

I'm self taught in almost everything, i learn in JIT fashion when a problem comes along, you learn how to fix it on the spot, although i've taught myself programming in my spare time rather than because i had to.

Long story short - i'm deeper into the industry than i have ever been, and i understand a lot more than i ever did, but i'm worried now this is it, manning support desks and helping people set their new iphone up to work with their company email.

A lot of the threads on HN about career paths are from young(er) graduates, or people who got into a startup early on and have the experience on their CV. So my question is this, how would someone coming from the opposite direction, older, not a graduate, no professional experience, think about breaking in to the industry?

I'd like to think it would be as simple as: keep coding, learn the frameworks, contribute to projects and start your own to build up a portfolio of work. But is that naive?