I’m assuming you’re not rich, so the first thing is: get a job. Start to work and saving what you can. It’s important to keep moving to keep the inertia going and not stall in a place where you’re completely broke.

What job? Whatever. Do Uber. Do McDonalds. Look for something. Get experience. Forget about dreams. They are useless and overrated. In the process of doing jobs, be curious. Spend the energy you would spend on dreaming into observing. You will find quickly what you like and what you hate. If the job is not for you get out and find another one. Go towards things you like, feel comfortable and feel capable doing.

While doing it ask yourself “What’s next?”, followed by “How?”. I’m working in car shop cleaning and organizing, what’s next? Fixing cars looks interesting, maybe I should try that? How? I’ll try to learn from these guys and do courses. What’s next? I may get a job fixing cars. Great, I know how to fix cars, they hired me and I like it. What’s next? Maybe having my own shop? How? You get the idea.

Keep a diary. It’s hard because it feels ridiculous. Like a teenager rambling about feelings. I still hate doing it to this day, and I’m 50. But it gives me insights about things I’m doing, because it helps you to see patterns in your behaviour. Like quitting when things were too hard to do because the noise in my head was unbearable and I had this depression that would not quit and I felt I as an alien around people and maybe I should do therapy and HOLY FUCK I’m autistic and that’s why EVERYTHING was so hard. The knowledge you may gain doing a diary is unvaluable. Do it the way you feel comfortable (or less painful) to do - physical notebook, computer, tablet, whatever.

In short: keep on moving, be curious, be self-reflective.

That’s all what I have for now, good luck!

There’s value in working a job and realizing it is not what you want to do as well. I did that for 10 years before I realized that I want to do something else instead and that I didn’t like having a boss either.

Try a few jobs until you find the least-worse one.

I wouldn’t stress too much about finding “the perfect fit” or some so-called dream job. Plenty of us work jobs that are tolerable and just pay the bills and use that money for our own enjoyment on the weekends. You’ll probably have to wade through some shit jobs for shit pay before you get there though.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I was well in my 30s. Prior to that, I worked at a very big retail bank and worked from a teller to a regional manager with over 220 stores under me.

You know what. I fucking hated every moment of that job.

I quit after my mom passed and they gave me 2 weeks off and then I was back into the grind.

I took 1 year off and decided to go into tech. The one place I enjoyed doing on my spare time.

I got my first tech job at 36. And since then have owned my own company and worked for big corporate companies.

You sorta have to try things and hate things before you know what you want.

You know, there’s this little shared but ever so prevalent fact about life: Not many know what they are doing. If anyone. You adapt and you try your best and things happen one way or another. You don’t have that much overall agency or the needed level of deeper understanding or foresight to control most things. You control what you can, endlessly despair over the things you can’t and still ever try and fail to control them, and at the end of the day you try your best to make it all make sense.

Some might even convince themselves that they are on top of it all. There are very few that genuinely are. Most of us don’t know what the hell we are doing and somehow stay afloat. Some better than others. I for one struggle.

I’m approaching middle age and genuinely have zero idea what is going on or what to do with my life.

Somehow things still work out mostly. Life is good. Good enough, that is.

All to say: try not to worry about this too much. You will just waste effort and energy trying to grasp on something even the best of us genuinely struggle with and only select few ever grasp. And those are mostly nepobabies. And the fact they grasp it, is mostly the endless opportunities they get to fail and try again with the safety net and resources they just have at hand.

Unless you have that kind of resources, just try your best to balance your passions, things that bring joy, and then time spent making some board member somewhere a fuck ton of money while getting scraps yourself. You need those scraps, the system is mostly shit, but the happiness is in understanding and accepting the chaos of it all. Not trying too much. You’ll just disappoint yourself.

Don’t expect to know what you want to do as in with your life. Try your best to focus and find joy in the things you know you want to do, as in individual actions. Then tolerate the time and energy you have to spend for someone else to get wealthy in order to sustain those little joys.

Eventually you’ll end up in a place that feels like home and where you have some clarity and purpose. Until then, you’ll think you’ve found them, you’ll fail, you’ll stumble and pick yourself up again, and that’s life.

The best you can do is just go with the flow and trust in what you know: yourself. Find happinesses, however small, and embrace them. Accept the rest for what it is. Mostly necessities to stay afloat to get with the small joys you know and want.

That’s the most any of us can do, unless we are born with a very rare set of skills, quirks or temperaments, or a golden spoon up our as. Seeing as the vast majority of us aren’t, you likely aren’t either. So don’t try to act like you do. You’ll just get depressed, suffer to no end, trying to fit a mold you were never going to fit.

If you don’t know what to invest an education in, just start trying different jobs in hopes of finding something you can tolerate.

Just sort of go with the flow, and keep an eye out for new things to do and try.

After high school I did community college for a while, ended up dropping out. Met a lot of people I’m still good friends with though, including my wife.

I delivered pizza for a few years, then eventually someone I knew said their job was hiring for their warehouse, so I went and did that for a few more years. Started dating my now wife while I was there, moved out of my parents’ house and moved in with her.

Along the way, I chased down a couple other jobs, nothing ever quite planned out. Then one day I saw that my county was doing a hiring event for their 911 dispatch center, so I applied for that. Got the job, asked my girlfriend if she wanted health insurance, and when she said yes we got married.

Eventually ended up getting a house and a dog, and here I am.

As for hobbies, if something sounds fun I try to figure out how to do it. I dabble in a little ham radio, I paint minis, I go hiking and camping, meet up with my friends to play games, cook, etc. They basically all start with me hearing about something cool and deciding I’d like to do it, and then, just doing it.

Good career advice in this thread.

I’m just going to kick in: Get on the Eightfold Path. I wish I would have started as a teen. But, ya know, that’s not the way it happened, so🤷.

Good luck! Seek to create joy always!

Being intentional about it can help. A handful of suggestions I don’t see in the top replies.

Volunteer: If there are any causes which you think are definitely good, find a local chapter (even something related) and show up! See what you can do for them. Make a friend and learn a bit about what they find fulfilling/interesting.

Travel and talk: If you’ve got money put aside, I might suggest a larger trip through (EU, US, broader culture, etc). You want to take a long train and talk with others traveling, see what they’re working on, hear how their lives have gone. Ask about their time after high school. See some historical sites, some art, and some local foods.

Local events: Check out the programming at a local library, pub, etc. Go to several things and see what’s happening!

Consider reading something like atomic habits (or in its genre); dreams aren’t terribly effective for doing things. Things get done because they’re important to who you are. If there’s a kind of person you want to be, focus on doing little things that reinforce that image.

People are advising about choosing a career and interests, but I think it’s a good idea to start by thinking about your relationship to the economy and capitalism and how you want to contend with it. Are you ok with working for the rest of your life? What types of work would you be able to tolerate or be able to enjoy, if any? What are your preferences and priorities with regards to how you are perceived, standard of living, family aspirations, financial security, where you will live? What advantages or disadvantages do you already have going for you? What assumptions are you making about what is financially possible, and could you be wrong? If you aren’t sure of these things about yourself, how could you find out? It’s worth trying new things to learn about the world.

This stuff is important, because there is more than what type of work you end up doing to what the shape of your life will be like.

Either you are born with a passion or you aren’t.

You didn’t say what you’re doing career-wise. Are you working? Do you like your job? If you answered no to either of those questions then that’s something to work on. It’s hard to go into specifics without knowing what you’re doing with your time.

Take random jobs.

Take random courses. (College or vocational)

A lot of people stumble into their carrers. Don’t sweat it to much if you don’t have to.

Ok this one is hard

1. Don’t sweat it, you have time. I only discovered what I was good at(and had fun to do) late in life.
2. work and/or study. Find shit job, they build character. They’re hard, they stinks, you’ll hate them. That’s life but that’s also part of the process. They’re probably low cost school in your area, take stupid course, art, programming, another language, etc. Don’t do nothing
3. open a saving account doesn’t matter how little you put in their but it’s a start
4. have fun