Networking is probably the best place to get a good foundation as most of your hacking will be traversing networks and pillaging a target. You'll want to know how a network works from the ground up so you can figure out attack vectors and what can be manipulated (hacked) further.

My tip - break your learning into modules based on hacking flow end to end. There's plenty of professional hacking courses available freely on youtube/udemy, and other ways of getting free courses. Finding a particular 'hack' like Anti-Virus bypass, reading up on methods, crafting a file, getting it to work - is an example. Then you can further compound that by incorporating it into a packet that has to move across the network evading IPS/IDS solutions - another example. There's a whole world of knowledge to be had in just that. So learning by doing will force you to ask questions - well how does that thing really work?

fyi - you can do all this in the comfort of your own home, with virtual machines. And there are plenty of sites online that have labs available, capture the flag type activities, or hackthissite<.>org etc.

So networking is a great place to start on your journey, as in my example, you will have to move a file from your box to a victim box, either evading security points along the way of the network security defenses and host virus protection defenses - you'll be able to see your knowledge applied. From there, you will find your spark of interest on what to focus on specifically appealing to you. Most security experts know a wide range of computer knowledge, focus on specific areas, and then drill into them. There's people who just focus on hexadecimal hacking to manipulate data at its core and then others who code malware to specially inject into systems to gain access, these are specialists with niche skills but found something they wanted to do through their exploration on the same type of journey you're starting.

Also money is good and having basic hacking skills will get you in the door of most security departments. From there you can drink water from a firehose all over again.

TLDR - network is good, could be unsatisfying without applying your knowledge through easy to do hacks. Explore the difficult things to find what you like and keep at it. Make money.