Changing careers at 4 years into a job, is it realistic? - what worked for you?

I want to move from mechanic to something with more stability. I have read a lot of threads here and could not find my exact situation. I have good customer skills and I am comfortable with spreadsheets. Did you take a pay cut?

Thanks for writing this out. I went through something close to it 11 months ago, and it settled down once I kept a simple log of every call and form.