cross roads/brick wall

I am feeling quite frustrated at the moment when I try and work out what to do with my life in terms of work and employment.
As I have mentioned before I am currently out of work due to health and personal reasons, but I would like to have something to aim for, so that when I am feeling up to returning to work I have a goal. However I keep running into brick walls wherever I turn and I am finding it very disheartening.
In the past I have had various jobs, ranging from part time shop assistant through to community development, support work and local government. Of these the community development and support work roles were by far the most interesting, although very draining on the emotions and I did find it very hard to switch off at the end of the day and found myself putting in long hours of of overtime for which I was not paid. Although I didn't mind at the time because the difference I could make to peoples lives was significant it was not something I could sustain in the long term. My least favourite job was working for local government, mainly because the bureaucracy, corruption and inherent cliquey nature were enough to drive me insane within about 2 weeks.
Alongside paid work I have done a lot of voluntary work in my local community, with my local hospital radio station and with my local BBC radio station. And I write, a lot. I have my blog but I also write fiction, short stories and to date one full length novel, all unpublished.
Ideally, I would like to make my living from a mixture of writing and broadcasting, but that is pretty much like people saying "I want to be a singer". If you have the talent and the contacts then it is not impossible but even then it is highly improbable.
Last year I applied, at the urging of a senior broadcast journalist with the Beeb, to a postgraduate course in broadcast journalism down in London. I didn't think I would even get an interview, mainly because I do not have a degree yet to my surprise I was immediately offered a place. Not only that I was also awarded a scholarship. So you may be wondering why I am not down there now, doing what I would love to do. Well, it comes down to one thing - money.
Even with a scholarship to pay my fees I could not have afforded to do the course. If I were to sell my house up north I would be unlikely to gain enough to cover what I still owe on the mortgage. Not only that but I only own a 50% share of the property and I would not want to shaft the owner of the other 50% by leaving. Which would leave me in the position of needing to rent somewhere in London, whilst also paying my mortgage up north, plus travel between the two cities due to family commitments up here, two lots of utilities bills, council tax payments, and so on. As the course was full time, 37 contact hours per week plus research etc there would have been no chance for me to work to fund my studies even if my health had allowed it, there are no student loans available for post grad study and you cannot claim benefits as you are classed as being in full time education. Which meant that broadcast journalism was well out of my price range.
While it is still something I would love to do I will not be able to without a significant change in my financial situation.
So what else could I do? Well even though I don't have a degree (again health and cost were the factors here rather than ability) I do not want to be stuck in a low level low pay job for my working life. I would quite like to be a pharmacist (I had briefly considered studying medicine but the whole close-contact-with-icky-people thing put me off before I even considered the financial implications) but as I did not do science A levels I would have to do them now, or an access course. Which would be OK except for the issue of funding again - as I already have A levels I would have to pay myself, and I would not be able to claim any kind for state assistance while I was doing them. Even if I did manage that then I would still be stuck when it came to funding the actual degree, so yet another idea has had to be shelved.
Recently I have been looking into the role of pharmacy technician, which also interests me but I have come up against the same problem again. You have to do an apprenticeship or traineeship for 2 years. During that time you are awarded a grant of £6000/year. So far so good. However as you are in full time work you cannot claim anything like income support or council tax benefit to assist you. As you are simultaneously classed as being in full time education you cannot claim working tax credits. Due to the commitments of the work and the study I would not be able to take an additional part time job to help with costs. So it comes down to a situation where if you are not a teenager living at home, or wealthy enough to survive for two years on a tiny income then you cannot realistically consider these kind of jobs.
So that leaves me feeling frustrated and miserable.
If you have any ideas, please let me know.