I am in the process of finishing my PPL, with around 80 hours. After I finish my PPL, I plan to go for my instrument and commercial.

I'm 31, and only recently have I come to realize that 12 year old me was smarter than 21 year old me, and I finally have enough money to think about things other than which bill I can skip this month if things come up short.

In addition to learning to fly, 12 year old me also wanted to build his own airplane, but step one of building a plane is choosing what plane to build, and that requires defining your mission. That is my problem, even after flying 80 hours I still can't believe that when I leave work today I will a be able to defeat gravity on command. So when I ask myself what will I do with the ability to fly, I still think of its a near impossible hypothetical that I want to answer with "everything", rather than something specific. I would like to start building a plane because I know that it will take years and I am looking forward to the experience, but I also know that if I choose the wrong plane and 3 years from now I realize that what I am building will not fit my mission, then it increases the likelihood that I will not finish the plane and selling an unfinished kit will mean that I am losing even more money than selling a finished homebuilt.

For that reason, I am keeping myself in the research phase rather than pushing to the build phase. But my question is, how long did it take you to define your mission, and if you look back at your logbook, at what number of hours did it start to become clear that your flights were had consistent commonalities?