It sounds like you are taking one of the most important first steps: acquiring knowledge about real estate investing and the different forms that it can take. While you do this, I would suggest a few things:
1) Figure out a way to be stockpiling away money. Regardless of the path you take in real estate, money is going to give you more options. If you haven't read it already, "Set for Life" by Scott Trench provides some good ideas on this from both a life perspective and a real estate perspective.
2) Identify your "Why". What is your end goal that you think real estate will help you achieve? Do you want to make real estate your vocation or do you want it to be a means to help you achieve the freedom to do what you want to do (ex. travel)? This "Why" is important for two things. First, it will help keep you motivated when you run into struggles with real estate investing. Second, it will help you decide which avenue of real estate investing you want to pursue and it will keep you focused on that. That brings me to my third suggestion.
3) Identify what real estate investing strategy you want to follow and concentrate your efforts learning the niches of it. And remember, this strategy should be directly tied to your Why. For example, if you want to use real estate investing as a means to support you financially while you travel, you'll likely be looking for a much more "passive" real estate investing strategy (ex. buy and hold). If you are looking for real estate to be a vocation, you may be interested in fix and flip (not to say that you can't eventually develop a fix and flip business that is passive).
4) Once you've identified the strategy you want to use, write down your SMART goals of how you are going to leverage that strategy to achieve your Why. Revisit these goals often and keep them in the forefront of your mind.
Wish you the best of luck! If you want to chat further, just message me.
