Jay, yes, you can take a gradual road to technical diving. And gear can be a later part of it.
The biggest difference between the usual recreational diving and "technical" diving is meticulousness. It's planning, and understanding gas consumption and gas supplies and gas reserves, and doing contingency planning for the "what ifs" that become more and more daunting as the dives get deeper and longer. It's skills -- polishing buoyancy and trim until they're totally invariant under stress and task-loading. It's poise and calm and a thoughtful approach to problems underwater. None of these things is related to gear at all, really, although emergency procedures are to some extent gear-dependent.
One of the things I like about the UTD Essentials class is that the only real gear changes it requires are paddle fins and a long hose/bungied backup arrangement. Both of these are inexpensive changes which are easily accomplished (in a recreational BCD, most can use a 5' hose). Essentials works on buoyancy control, trim, alternative propulsion techniques, and situational awareness, and these are all core concepts for deeper diving. Practicing and becoming comfortable with gas donation and air-sharing ascents, and working with no mask, are all things you can do in the gear that you have, or with minor adjustments.
If you are truly headed for staged decompression diving, you will eventually need to make gear changes, but they do not need to be your first step. Although, as you learn more about contingency planning, you will quickly decide that some kind of redundancy is mandatory for yourself, below some threshold depth.
Solidifying your basic diving skills and getting some deeper recreational experience is an excellent way to work up to deeper dives. As a wonderful instructor of mine once said, "Do all the dives you can do with the certification you have; when you are totally bored, get more education."
