I had an analogous experience at your age, but about 40 years ago. I spent that time learning skills that most programmers of that era found difficult, but that I liked. My thinking was that without a degree I'd need something marketable enough that they'd overlook my non-education. (At that time the things I learned were assembly language and compiler writing.) It was a very successful strategy.

Don't take these examples literally, but maybe I might try to be the best Rust programmer I can because it's thought to be a hard language to learn. Since you like networking maybe low-level Posix networking in C, or websockets. This are probably bad examples because I'd do a seriously deep dive into what jobs are being advertised that look interesting to you, which ones pay more than average, and which companies you might prefer to work for.

A related strategy was that I only applied for 2 or 3 jobs at a time, because I looked for companies I thought I'd like, and which I thought I could serve well with my skills. When I got to the interviews I would have a genuine interest in the company and could ask informed questions about areas that intrigued me.