Working Out A Career Plan

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I'm currently working full-time in a relatively low-wage position and have been for the past 15 months. It's worked well for me as a first full-time job, but I feel like I'm capable of getting higher-paid, higher-skilled work, and would like to pursue that.

The problem is all the unknowns that stand in the way. The first being I'm unsure what career to pursue, and unsure how to figure it out definitively (though I have a couple of ideas).

Then even if I figure out what to strive for, I then need to figure out what and where to study to get me there. And after I do that, I need to figure out how I get into the chosen industry having finished study but having no on-the-job experience with it.

Does anybody have any experience, insight or advice to share?

I was a messenger, a clerk-typist, a Census taker, and an "order-picker" when I was 18-19 years old.

I was being bullied in my "order-picker" job, and I saw an ad for a temporary data-entry operator. I knew I could do better, since I was a good typist. And I wanted to stop being bullied. I was only making $100 a week after taxes at the "order-picker" job, so I quit the "order-picker" job and went to work as a data-entry operator, making $140 a week.

Four months later, a fellow worker informed me that a job paying about $60 more per week was available. She was going on an interview for it. She advised me to go, too. I almost didn't go----but I went.

I got the job (and she didn't). The job did pay $60 more per week PLUS it was a Civil Service job, with an option for me to take a test to make it permanent. So I took the test, then another test. And I became permanent civil service as a data-entry operator in 1981. I still work for that same agency at this moment, 2019.

I started on my present job November 3rd, 1980, as a "provisional." I took the test soon after. I became Civil Service on November 23, 1981, when the agency "picked me up" from the "civil service list." I went through 6 months of probation and became Permanent Civil Service on May 23rd, 1982.

You won't know what you like and are good at without trying something different