You love cello, photography, history, and English. That’s good. How do you know you love them? Because you’ve had a chance to experience them and you discovered you liked them. What about the millions of other things you haven’t experienced yet? Is there something that you might love even more than these things, but you just don’t know it yet?
You can have all of these things as hobbies, or you can choose to turn one or a combination of them into a career. It is an important distinction. Within each “category”, there are many different paths. You could play the cello or photograph them, be a war photojournalist or study old photos, news reporter or historical fiction novelist…
You can choose to feel your way through this process, or you can choose to take a more analytical approach. At least for me, there is a subconscious reason certain professions appeal to me more than others. I have inherent preferences that lead to me liking and disliking different jobs. Once I understood why I prefer A to B, I became more aware of what I need from a job to be happy, and where I should be looking became much more apparent.
Some questions to ask yourself (that I’ve found helpful in my own path to self discovery) include:
—Do you prefer working with ideas, things, or people?
—Where do you want to live? Urban/suburbs/rural? Do you want to work in a specific geographical area?
—What kind of working environment do you prefer? Indoors/outdoors? At a desk? In front of people? Traveling constantly? On rooftops?
—Do you want to provide a service or be a producer of goods?
—How much decision making will your job involve? All day? Occasionally? What kinds of problems/issues? What kinds of decisions?
—When you show up to work for the day, will you know what to expect? What level of predictability do you prefer?
—How much variety? Do you prefer continuously new projects or steady routine?
—How much free time is necessary for hobbies, family, etc?
—How important is job security?
—How important is portability? (e.g. a nurse is highly portable)
—How competitive do you need your job to be?
—Future demand?
—Difficulty in getting into the field in the first place – how much difficulty are you willing to face?
—What careers would you be most proud to be engaged in?
—How would you like to be perceived by yourself and others w/ regards to your work?
—How much power and status, recognition, and fame?
—Social impact?
These are all questions Nicholas Lore poses in his book The Pathfinder. He wrote another book specifically for young people (under 30) that may be more appealing to you. They are probably at your local library. I recommend checking them out.