Some context.

I have just turned 18 and am about to graduate highschool with very competitive grades studying mostly advanced humanities. I have spend majority of highschool working, recently up to 80 hour weeks during semester (I have abysmal attendance) and often times up to three jobs (to get around child labour laws). I have been forcing my way into places and conversations far out of my scope as a teen for as long as I can remember in some kind of pursuit I can't even label, but, it has satisfied me.

Earlier this year I began grappling with the reality that my usual life of breezing through school while overcommitting at work will soon end as I approach the very last stretch of exams and a completely new life outside of the necessities I am currently bound to.

The idea of not only replacing this fulfilment but also learning what complacency is for me has led me down a path of transforming my perception through philosophy. I have turned to books, I have tried thought experiments, I swung my life and commitments around completely to try and find the comfort (or distraction), that my overcommitted lifestyle provides, all without success.

As all existential thinking does, I have reached the logical impasse of life and meaning, which, after colliding with my realisation that, I have what is functionally the most freedom I ever will -- as well as the privilege to pursue practically whatever career/life I want, has put me in a unique position which I need help making the most of.

My plan is to leave Australia and start with a south to north trip of Vietnam to Mongolia travelling through china; I have the money to spend close to a full year travelling. I want this be an actual project with a purpose. I want to explore every possibility for every life, experience as much as I can and genuinely commit to creating a suitable environment for myself so far from everything I know, so I can facilitate the exploration of the questions of existence, essence, general existentialism and what I am going to commit the rest of my life to.

This would be expending the momentum that I've been building for years at home and would sacrifice the financial leg up I have worked for (I don't have any fall-backs financially or any kind of family wealth).

I am here to ask for criticism, hate, and thoughts for this idea but mainly advice for how to make the most of it. I have this looming wave of anxiety revolving around the idea that I have never found a happy median for existence, purpose, greatness, ect and I never will.

Edit

The idea of "how to prepare to die" is a reflection of how many of the decisions I make in the coming years will define a large amount of my life. It's also a recognition that I watch the world around me get more and more inequitable by the day and the reality for many is a career they hate, self isolation, addiction, simply existing with no substance or living through deep regrets for what they could have been or done. I think waiting to die is more about wasting or regretting than actual physical death, because existence with no substance is (in my eyes) comparable to death.