Sachys: YES.
I'm self employed and became so from being entirely unemployed.
The kind of things you're looking at doing wont be an income in any way for some time unless you are very lucky or exceptionally talented AND very lucky.
You WILL need a day job / source of regular income in the meantime, so dont put all your eggs in one basket.
The latter bit of advice goes with each of those areas you're looking into - if you want to write, then why not also put out some dramatic readings of your work on free sites like podiobooks.com? (worked for a few people, but will also give you some feedback, an audience and potential hookups for other stuff).
Be prepared to get no money offered for any of the work you do for a long time. People always seems to think anyone working creatively in any way should work for free or for the "exposure" their project (that they will no doubt profit from somehow) brings with it.
I am leaning towards the writing and voice acting there as those are the things ive the most direct experience with, though I know from others that game devs have similar paths and I'm sure youtubing also suffers many of those trappings.
So... I suggest you maybe find some kind of small "portfolio" type project you can do in your spare time (while finding that godforsaken day job that will make it all seem worthwhile) that combines all the things you're interested in doing and go from there.
Interactive visual novel perhaps - a choose your own adventure style one that could even be enacted across a multitude of youtube uploads and made interconnected by the ever present captions and visualised through some basic use of unity, blender etc?
...dont recall ever seeing that before actually - so theres a thing!
Wow, thanks for the really great advice. :) And especially thanks for the idea - it didn't occur to me that I could combine all of these into one... until now :)
xieliming: It's a huge risk especially if you have nothing else to fall back on i.e. previous career/experience or education/qualifications.
But if you're very young, now is the time to take risks. I took risks too - I made a huge career change but again I had other things to fall back on in case it didn't work out.
As with investments, diversify. Get into something fairly safe that will reap benefits in the long term for you and use the rest of your resources (time/energy etc.) into more risky but rewarding things you wish to do. Sachy's advice is good here.
Also it seems like you don't know what you want to actually do. That's okay, pick one at a time and go all in for it. If it doesn't work out, you didn't loose too much. Reevaluate what you want based on what you now know and try the next best thing you want to try.
Good luck!
Yeah, the risky part is actually coming from the fact that I DON'T have anything to fall back on. :D
Thanks! :)
Klumpen0815: I never got into normal higher education due to my very bad family background and other reasons, had to abort university out of financial reasons too (didn't get into the field I wanted to go into anyway), but am doing fine and better every year, I've got a nice job where I can create musical instruments (right up my alley) and enough time to get my own product line together which is materializing right now.
XYCat: I dunno, making something cool :D
Making a game or something would be the most reasonable as it presumably might be done without the need of meeting in person since there's people all over the world here.
Klumpen0815: Hey, I always wanted to participate in making a game as a musician.
I'm a multiinstrumentalist mostly playing hurdy-gurdy and oriental frame drums but other stuff too.
If you want to stand out, use real instruments/music instead of pc generated stuff, nobody is doing this anymore, last game I knew that used real musicians was Knights of Honor, at least I think so.
Oooh, oooh, I knew I made the right choice posting here! :D Having real instruments in a game sounds pretty great. I can't even remember what was the last game I played that had stuff like that.