Welcome to The Elder Scrolls series of games.

It's a great community here - lots of friendly, helpful people. Hope you enjoy your stay.

As to what you should do now, if you're ever in doubt go to the bar and start talking to people or just get a tankard and kick back by the fire with one of the great books you'll find in your travels.

If you're looking for gold, most people have work for you in the towns so just talk to people and do what you want.

Also there's a quest log that will help keep you on track. If you get lost with where you're supposed to go, click on a quest and it'll mark the area on your map or don't and just find it yourself.

Keep in mind, there's the main quest line and all the side quests. The main quest line is what leads to the "end game" and you're free to work your way right through that questline or ignore it till later. You can basically do whatever you want.

Me? I like to explore the world around me. I hunt for pelts and mine for minerals while exploring. I sell the equipment that drops from bandits and raiders and I turn the pelts into leather and the ore into ingots then make armor and weapons with it.

I've made all the armor and weapons I'm using but they weren't good enough so I started to experiment with enchanting. I'm really awful at enchanting but it's fun. However it's fun to know that I'm creating the very things that will save my life out in the wilderness areas between the towns.

Myself I just started exploring the topside of the world, acquiring quests without doing them. I do this until I'm around level 30, then I figure "hey, wonder how the dragons are" so I did the quest that "unlocked the dragons". Continued topside exploring and doing some quests, and voila - I'm level 53 having had my first "A eccounter" (you'll know what it is when you get there), still without having touched the majority of the game.

If doing this becomes boring, increase the difficulty as you see fit. And remember to save often. Not sure if most of the quest related bugs have been fixed with latest patch, so get ready to look them up on wiki if you "feel stuck" on a quest you think you should be able to get through - or continue messing around.

What I did, what others did, what you will do - will be very different. That's the idea of sandbox role playing games

Go to the college in Winterhold and get a room there so you have somewhere to store things.Read all the books because some are skill books.