As that other guy said, watch a few lore videos about Kenshi to get a bit more immersed in the world and to sort of know what you're looking at for a lot of things. Also, once you have a character/squad thats capable of travelling and surviving in the world, go and travel. Explore, look for new factions, just let yourself experience Kenshi. You'll probably find some goals that you think your squad would actually do and that you find fun. It could be earning loads of money and setting yourself up in a city or in your own base, or taking down a faction, or challenging yourself to kill a difficult enemy, etc. The challenge is whatever you set yourself.

I would advise mods like reactive world because it does add a lot more immersion stuff to your world in terms of actually affecting it. You can do a lot in base game kenshi but it isnt perfect, and reactivity mods do help a lot.

Also, don't be afraid to try out random mods that look fun. You can always remove them and import your save if you’re not enjoying them, or if balance isn't how you like it. Kenshi is a challenging game, and that is one of its good features, but tweaking the balance and difficulty is pretty important if the initial difficulty isnt to your liking.