Suggestions...

Hey! I am currently a high school senior possibly interested in becoming a website designer. I am wanting to pursue a career that would allow me to work completely from home (web designer/computer programming/web developer) - I am most interested in web design. I've read online that taking college courses for anything computer related would be a waste of time and money because of the rate at which the computer evolves ... so if I do decide to go into web design I would teach myself.

How feasible do you think it would be that I could do web design and make a decent amount of money (enough to live on)? The average salary of a designer is around $40-50,000 annually.

I'm new to the world of designing/this site, are there any members here that could help me find a place to begin? Any books/websites/videos you would recommend? I'd love to see some of your work with website designing and am interested in how long it took you to learn how to design!