It sounds to me like you haven't internalized a lot of the advice in the first half of "Clean Code" and/or the entirety of "The Pragmatic Programmer". Either of those books takes a few weeks to read slowly and a few months-to-years of deliberate practice to internalize and synthesize as your own. The good news is that admitting you have a problem is the first step.

Personally I find I still frequently write pretty atrocious code on the first draft, and it's only by stepping back from the problem after demonstrating to myself I understand it well enough to solve it at all that I can begin to write a more graceful solution. But deadlines and reality being what they are, I think the majority of us are embarrassed by our past code a majority of the time.

So don't be too hard on yourself, but also frankly don't worry about shoe-horning yourself into "A Career" either. They're kind of a recent invention and the whole concept might need a few more iterations. You could spend a few years as a Product Manager, an Engineering Manager, a Highschool Teacher, or a Business Analyst, leveraging your past experience to gain competency in a new niche.

I want to emphasize of self-awareness you have is commendable and not universally present: If you can realistically assess your own current skill level and then apply yourself to improving, you could be an above average software engineer before you know it. And right now it seems like so so many companies just can't get enough software engineers, so it's a pretty safe place to practice learning how to learn while also earning a decent income.