Need some help ..

I am a 19 year old , and have been trading for about 2.5 years now. I really have a passion for financial markets and always have , my ideal situation would be to trade full time and eventually found my own hedge fund or work my way into being a PM or trader at a firm , however I know it is critical that I have a foundation to live on and a backbone of cash flow to provide a plan B incase trading goes into a period of drawdown which it will.

I have tried working second shift jobs in order to still have time to trade , but most jobs don’t provide enough income to really build a savings due to the fact that I pay my own insurance. So I’ve narrowed my options down to 2 paths , my question is mainly what is the path you would recommend ?

Path 1.) Find and cold contact firms with intentions to land an internship with hopes that that will lead to a job within the trading side of the firm - however I have already contacted 43 firms and have only heard back from 1 , mainly due to the fact that I do not have a finance degree. I guess my main question for this path is should I continue to contact firms even though I technically have no qualifications other than personal experience which doesn’t deem credible to the institutional side of the industry and rightfully so , or am I going about contacting them the wrong way and what is the best way to contact them ?

Path 2.) Join the Air Force (4 year term) and learn a skill in order to have the ability to land a carrier that would potentially give me time to swing trade , also I would have income saved up from my time in the air force , due to my calculations roughly around (24,000 - 28,000) which I could use partially as funding for my trading account and some for a backbone as well. My main concern with this path is will I even have time in the air force to sharpen my trading skills and swing trade in the mean time just to continue to stay in the process and drill down on my execution ?