Tackling life after high school.

I don't know how to do it. Everyone keeps asking me, what are you gonna do? Where you gonna go? I have no idea. I don't know what to tell them. I wish I could just live life and become some kind of roaming layabout and discover my dream while backpacking across some distant land. However it seems that is not a choice I can make.  I know it's probably not correct to say that I am not an interesting person but I just don't feel like one. I haven't explored space, mastered the art of taming beasts, or learned to juggle. Nothing about my life is extraordinary. I'm a suburban kid, in a modest home, with decent grades. What's there to sell? No one could have lived a more mundane existence. 
 
Some would argue that there are big choices before deciding what you'll do after high school. From what I've seen so far, I would disagree. Life so far has been a very linear track. Go to school, meet people, drive around, and generally fuck about. Now I have some significant ability to determine how my future plays out and I'm scared and confused. I feel like every passion I've devoted myself to has no way of helping me out in the practical pursuit of wealth. Video games, movies, and guitar all happen to be the industries that are impossible to extract a steady job from. I'm at a loss. I'll just pick a career that I can stand and hope that one day I'm in a position where I can tackle my dream.

I don't know how to do it. Everyone keeps asking me, what are you gonna do? Where you gonna go? I have no idea. I don't know what to tell them. I wish I could just live life and become some kind of roaming layabout and discover my dream while backpacking across some distant land. However it seems that is not a choice I can make.  I know it's probably not correct to say that I am not an interesting person but I just don't feel like one. I haven't explored space, mastered the art of taming beasts, or learned to juggle. Nothing about my life is extraordinary. I'm a suburban kid, in a modest home, with decent grades. What's there to sell? No one could have lived a more mundane existence. 
 
Some would argue that there are big choices before deciding what you'll do after high school. From what I've seen so far, I would disagree. Life so far has been a very linear track. Go to school, meet people, drive around, and generally fuck about. Now I have some significant ability to determine how my future plays out and I'm scared and confused. I feel like every passion I've devoted myself to has no way of helping me out in the practical pursuit of wealth. Video games, movies, and guitar all happen to be the industries that are impossible to extract a steady job from. I'm at a loss. I'll just pick a career that I can stand and hope that one day I'm in a position where I can tackle my dream.

After high school I moved to Japan, hiked the largest mountain in the country, made love to my first woman, taught english, went to business school, transferred to Law School, met Kojima, people from Square Enix, and had the greatest video game voice actresses as my boss. 
 
Dude, the gates are open, just head out there and charge in.  You'll be fine, just focus on that resolve. 
 
Also, take lots of chances, no point living if you're not willing to risk everything for something.

You sir are an inspiration. 

I feel very much the same way.
I plan on becoming a vagabond!

You don't seem to know what you want to do with yourself yet.

I can tell you that you've got to figure that out for yourself.  You're on a gaming community website, so you might pursue that in some way.

There are lots of important decisions that you have to make before you get out of high school.  You might have missed them, but picking what activities you're involved in, where and if you volunteer, and whether you work on building your marketable skills or not are all important decisions.  You sound like you have lots of opportunity and don't know what to do with it.

" After high school I moved to Japan, hiked the largest mountain in the country, made love to my first woman, taught english, went to business school, transferred to Law School, met Kojima, people from Square Enix, and had the greatest video game voice actresses as my boss.  Dude, the gates are open, just head out there and charge in.  You'll be fine, just focus on that resolve.  Also, take lots of chances, no point living if you're not willing to risk everything for something. "

KaosAngel was my boss.

man, sounds kinda similar to my life

YOU SHOULD SHOOT UP SOME HEROIN AND GO TO THE MOON BRETHEN

One of the best things you can do from my experience, is to just go out and meet people.
 
Meeting people leads to numerous contacts and possible job situations.

" After high school I moved to Japan, hiked the largest mountain in the country, made love to my first woman, taught english, went to business school, transferred to Law School, met Kojima, people from Square Enix, and had the greatest video game voice actresses as my boss.  Dude, the gates are open, just head out there and charge in.  You'll be fine, just focus on that resolve.  Also, take lots of chances, no point living if you're not willing to risk everything for something. "

given what little experience i have, the only advice i can offer is that, whatever you do, make sure you're keeping your creative fulfilment bar full. who cares about financial security? as long as you can afford to eat and do something you love, simultaneously, then nothing else matters.

Tch, I'm a junior in college and I still don't know what I want to do. I just picked a major that semi-interested me and went with it so I wouldn't be here for like 8 years.  Beyond that I'm fucking clueless man. Welcome to the club.

" @Video_Game_King: I picked it up in 3 months, before going I could do it basic.  After the house family teaching me, and talking to people...it took about 3 months to get it down.  Still can't write for shit...to much chinese. "

I've been thinking about this kind of thing for the past few months. I'm in my second year of college, and if I didn't already have all this student loan debt, I would drop out and just go get a simple job somewhere (waiter, cashier, etc.) instead of all this "reach for the stars" bullshit society feeds us. Problem is that I was ushered into college without really thinking about it just because it was the "next step" in the educational ladder.
 
@Toms115 said:

" who cares about financial security? as long as you can afford to eat and do something you love, simultaneously, then nothing else matters. "

You don't tackle life.  Life tackles you.

Stop with this nonsense. Mundane and mediocre outnumber the talented. You're not the only average person. There are plenty of things you can do, you just apply yourself. You'll soon find yourself miles behind the pack if you mope for too long.

 Video games, movies, and guitar all happen to be the industries that are impossible to extract a steady job from. 

" @azhang: 
 
Some of them definitely aren't hard. Hell, I already know that 人 means person, but I can see how something like 後背位 would be hard to memorize. "

Do not forget in all of this that KaosAngel has extremely rich parents and had the ability to do all this as he was likely rolling round on daddy's chequebook or at least had it as a back up.

I know the advice is not that great... but dude 
 
Just live, if you're not gonna do college, just live life. Hang with friends, plan a road trip, follow a band cross country, just be alive.

I didn't know either out of High School, until I took a few college classes and found something interesting I can do.

I moved to Japan too, moved in with my uncle of course. Went to school there, met some guy who kept falling off his bike, this girl who worked at the local inn and some other girl who liked steaks. Then things started getting f'd up, people started getting pushed into TV's and we met a hollow bear... 
 
Oh, did I mention I can summon monsters? Yeah there's that.

I say you should go to college. Don't know what you want to do? Just take the general education courses. This way, when you decide on a path, you just have to take the core courses, and you're done!
 
Trust me, man. You're only going to be this young once, and may not ever have the opportunity to put this much time into school again. You'll never reach a point in life where you say, "Man, I wish I hadn't gone to college." But you may regret not going one day. So I say go to school now, and then when you're done you can backpack in foreign lands and do anything you want! You'll have even more options with a degree.

" @azhang: 
 
Some of them definitely aren't hard. Hell, I already know that 人 means person, but I can see how something like 後背位 would be hard to memorize. "

If you were boring in life, you can be exciting in death. Commit a creative suicide in public and people will remember you always.

I had no idea either. I didn't want to go to college because I feel like I was going to waste my time. Instead I thought about joining the military for a while and I did. I joined the Navy. Now, I'll be able to travel the world while getting payed and feel like I'm actually doing something. And this experience will help me later in my life. I'll learn how to take care of myself better.

I never tried to tackle life after high school, just tried to dodge it.

" (I guess doggy style would count as a sentence in a conversation, somehow). "

" @ajamafalous: 
 
Quoting the Wikipedia article on Japanese:
 
As a result of this grammatical permissiveness, there is a tendency to gravitate towards brevity; Japanese speakers tend to omit pronouns on the theory they are inferred from the previous sentence, and are therefore understood. A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!".   This means that in the course of a regular conversation, I can just yell "DOGGY STYLE!", and it would make perfect sense. I wish the English language could do things that amazing. "

" @ajamafalous:   I've my doubts that such things are possible. It reminds me of my plans to yell "RAMADAN!" at people (in place of "Happy Ramadan"), only with more sex. "

next thing to do in life is to go to college to something that your interested in. i picked a college (community) at the last minute of high school. i don't like school so yeah, i'm still there for like 3.5 years. it sucks that i that i;m there for so long.