Don't worry about self-teaching engineering right now. You're planning too far ahead like you did with all the years spent in college pursuing law only to find

Don't worry about self-teaching engineering right now. You're planning too far ahead like you did with all the years spent in college pursuing law only to find out you don't like it (something you could have learned in a significantly shorter amount of time had you just interviewed, volunteered, and intern for a couple weeks/months prior to studying for it). Point being, same thing here. Find something interesting but relatively simple you may want to code out. Ask your friends for some help, if needed, but work through it. Read books and websites where applicable and get a feel for whether you even like it or not. If not, you'll save yourself a lot of time rather than worry about all the other junk and move onto the next thing. Same thing with hardware. If it all works out, you can figure it out step by step once you're pass the basics.