I am just finishing my MSc and taking a gap year. I intend to continue in physics and do a PhD. Given that a PhD is a lot of hard and probably stressful work, I want to study something that I am genuinely excited about so that I am intrinsically motivated.

The good thing is that I know what "attributes" I enjoy and what is my motivation for studying physics but I do not know of a specific topic that fits the bill.

To give some background for my motivations:

I got interested in physics when I was pretty young and I was motivated by its promise for groundbreaking technologies. Initially I read a lot of science magazines and popularized physics books like Michio Kaku's "Physics of the impossible" and I was really into transhumanism, space exploration etc. On the other hand I wanted to learn how the universe fundamentally works. My naive way of thinking was to kill two birds with one stone by learning advanced physics topics well and then using this knowledge to come up with groundbreaking theoretical ideas for new technologies.

cont.