Your twenties are mostly not earning years, they're learning years. Therefore, say yes to all opportunities - you learn more from yes than from no. There are a

Your twenties are mostly not earning years, they're learning years. Therefore, say yes to all opportunities - you learn more from yes than from no. There are a lot of narratives about working life, but they are stereotypes. You need the real thing. Every situation is a little different from the stereotype and often people fall into a very specific niche and approach that works for them. You will still feel the pull of doing your own thing on top of work, regardless. Doing your own thing only "matters" in a societal sense(and hence an economic one) if it involves a fully coherent idea that others can engage with, and that is rarely going to be the case until you can get past your own flaws - it is a tremendously hard task for a young person still freshly indoctrinated into beliefs that may not apply to them. Half of the learning is unlearning the thing you were just taught to believe in through a decade+ of education, because that's basically always wrong, and then the other half is to build up your own principled approach so that life retains some meaning to it. The usual method of combating the tendency towards self-indulgent personal work is to study: not to make because you believe a thing is good, but because you're studying that thing, and making is part of studying. If I try to draw a horse from my imagination, it won't look very good, but if I put together a lot of reference, break it down to basic forms and draw based on those studies, I can draw an excellent horse. But obviously, actually studying the horse would perturb my previous beliefs - it's a "lowering of my esteem" to think I would have to do that. So I have to overcome something within myself to even try, because like with any exercise, I'll resist the exertion. And that kind of thinking about how to get yourself to grow is the kind of headspace you need to get to, if you want to land in a better position over the course of years.