Career choices and best way to start myself off

Sounds like a dying industry, but telecom pays and is easy clean work. Skip buried service (ditch diggers) and construction (cable haulers) go for fiber splicer, Installation and Repair, or cable maintenance. Fiber splicing has aerospace openings too as fiber weighs allot less than copper, but aerospace is up and down after your project ends. All these are very hands on and have excellent union benefits/wages. My mechanic buddy works for the post office in fleet maintenance and showed up to my wedding with grease under his nails, I've never seen his hands clean! And I will always be the first one to tell you the military is a great place to start...in anything. You want a job for life? USAF/USN AWACS crewman. Do 20 and your done, do 30 and your done with like 80% of your last wage for life.