Approaching quarter-life, where are the dots and how to connect them?

Seriously, I have no idea. 

There are so many articles out there, circulating around telling you what you ought to do in your 20s, what you should not do in your early 20s, what you wished to know in your 20s, and bla bla bla... and it gets repetitious after some time.

I came across this line a while ago. 'The best way to get life experience is to go out there and live'. The best advice to build your own future has to come from yourself. You have to observe how to observe, to learn how to learn, and to fail how to fail, in order to succeed. 

Then I started to find the dots and tried to connect them by travelling.  (p/s: But then again, this is not the only way, or the best way as implied by those articles on the internet. )

There was a time in my university life when I suddenly realised that I haven't seen the world enough. London is the only big city I have lived in throughout my life. Being a metropolitan city, London has provided me many great opportunities and occasions to see things from various perspectives, as well as amazing experiences that I have never come across before. 

From then onwards, I chased after big cities. From London to Paris, to Berlin, to Amsterdam, to New York, to San Francisco, to Istanbul and to Melbourne. Some of them carry a baggage from the past, some of them carry a mission for the future, while some of them carry a lifestyle of the present. So, I thought I would be able to find some extraordinary dots to connect. 

Truth to be told, those cities were really captivating, offering many answers, yet giving more questions at the same time. However I couldn't connect the dots that I found along the way. The journey is akin to looking into a very unique kaleidoscope- beautiful, yet so perplexing.

When I was in San Francisco, I had the chance to get down to some of the tech clusters in Palo Alto and Mountain View. The dynamism is off the chart, and the contradictory traits are so profoundly true. I tried to emulate parts of them, but to no avail. It gets so unreal and psychologically difficult to maintain. 

I took some time out after graduation, so that I will have the time to understand those dots that I found along the journey, before starting a new chapter in life. The observations, feelings, and thoughts which appeared serendipitously in the quest for connecting the dots were thrown out to see the connections between them.  

Few months later, nothing came out of it. Many lines were drawn, many shapes were formed, and even more were erased and remained as dots, as they were before.

So, sometimes I wonder, where are the dots and how to connect them? (blame Steve for this. oh maybe Apple gonna patent this up too! )