I was in a similar position to you in my twenties, I spent a lot of that time working in bars and restaurants simply because it was what I knew and because I was totally uncertain about the future and felt adrift.

By my mid twenties I was just really tired and soul sick, so I saved up a bit of cash and then hitch-hiked around the US for two years, living out of a pack, mostly outside. It’s an extreme course that I don’t necessarily recommend for everyone, but I think I needed to get outside it all so I could really assess what was important, what I was willing or not willing to deal with etc.

When I finally came back, I went back to restaurants, but with a new sense of scale and possibility about life. A friend I worked with moved to an IT job, and suggested I should apply. Before my period of wandering, I would’ve probably passed the opportunity up feeling like it was too unfamiliar, but my mindset about risk had changed completely by that point and taking the job was a no brainer.

That job led to a different career trajectory, it’s not my dream career but it made it possible to afford a modest home with my sister and to create a lot of security. Goals that seemed out of reach became more realistic, and as I seize on those goals the opportunities tend to compound and it gets easier to plan the future.

The thing to understand about your twenties is you’re afforded the ability to make mistakes and experiment, to take risks. Some people know what they want right out of high school (or it’s decided for them) and sometimes those people do have a very clear course laid out and the means to achieve it. That’s not the case for everyone, and it’s ok to tackle life at a pace that makes sense to you in your context.

The only suggestions I would give is to use your twenties to just take sensible risks and do stuff, even if something seems too big to tackle take a run at it anyway. Pursue opportunities actively and eventually one will stick. You’ll meet a lot of failure or dead ends but that’s perfectly ok and normal because you’ll be learning something each time and honing your life saaviness. Failure can be painful, but it’s good, particularly in your twenties when you’ve got so much time ahead of you. Just be careful of accruing debt, that’s sort of the main thing that can screw you a bit.