Okay, so now my character is level 30, so he's getting slightly badass. I did a dungeon quest and got a pet, it's this little cat thing, pretty cute. I'm now a level 33 fisherman and in the teens on fishmongering, so I can make slightly more complicated fish recipes. I've been able to sell the fish I make for a decent profit, so I actually have some money now, but I have no idea what to spend it on.
The early parts of thegame included extremely fast levelling -- you can literally jump to level 20 in a few hours. But after that, and especially around level 30, levelling starts to slow down, and now it takes an hour or so to gain a level. That's still a hell of a lot faster than some other MMORPG's though.