Hello Tristan!
I myself am 20 years old, so we are very similar in age and can relate to your current situation, so perhaps I can help with some advice. I also live in California and I can say that finding deals to flip, rent, wholesale or house hack will be rather difficult, although, your specific area may differ from mine.
First, you should decide what peaks your interest the most, whether it be flipping properties, building a rental portfolio for passive income, or wholesaling deals. Now of course there are other avenues of real estate, but these three are the most common and are usually the beginning of most real estate investors.
Second, you have to decide where you want to invest. As most know, California is much more difficult to find good deals and they also require much more capital due to California prices, even with HML. Now you can decide to stick with California, but out of state is your best choice and that is what I personally decided. If you do go the out of state route, you will now have to pick which market(s) to dive into. This can be decided by researching jobs being created in a market, unemployment rate, median income, or even if you lived there before or even have family that live there.
To add on to that, due to being new to real estate, it will be a bit more harder to find lending or to obtain good lending terms from hard money lenders due to not having any experience. Because of that, it might be a considerable option to look into finding a partner/JV who has the experience and connections to aid you in your RE journey. Through that partnership/JV, you can lend your capital or put it into a deal where you would ideally earn a good return on your investment. Meanwhile, you can also learn the process of flipping, buy and hold or wholesaling while not have the 100% risk if you were to have done it yourself. Which in the long run saves you time, money, headaches and from burnout.
If you have any questions do not hesitate to reach out to me through pm, I am here to help.