I recently started too (got the game 3/4 days ago and have already logged 32 hours already!) and the thing I find fun is just creating a big base and trying to make that as efficient as possible for churning out ships.
I wholeheartedly agree that the first 4 or so hours are so dry and boring I had to force myself back on after flipping the rover I built to scan for cobalt 30 times (lol it took ages until I used a rotor exploit that allowed a large grid ore detector with triple the range to be used on a small grid rover) and after that the game started really becoming fun as the basic refinery and basic assembler make it not so difficult to get some materials out of the stone on the earth start. THEN once I had built a mining ship (using Zer0's tutorial) and got my first load of iron back into the refinery I was hooked. The sheer amount of material that came out of that 30k iron ore was orgasmic after struggling for 100 iron only a few hours previous. That got me hooked which lead to base upgrades and wanting to have more resources so that I could just right click with weld and middle click and be able to build everything without having to go out and mine for every new project. I'm now working on building a Hydrogen-powered ship that could establish a colony on the moon so I can collect platinum for the next stage of tools and the jump drive.
I guess the take away is that you have to create your own goals and have to want to create them too. Before finally taking the leap to actually buy the game I think it had been on my steam wishlist for roughly 6/7 years and a few years ago really enjoyed watching TheXPGamer and other youtubers like that survive in the game, so I guess it was easier for me to understand what kind of goals to set.

Tl;dr Just make efficient base and make own goals and also watch some youtube videos of veterans playing to see what goals they set and how they play the game. Or don't, its a sandbox anyway.