What is philosophy?
It’s the obvious place to start.
Before answering this question I’ll just note that philosophers seem to care an awful lot about what makes something philosophy. Professional academics wage turf wars over what ‘counts’ as philosophy. Careers are made and unmade by accusations that some person is or isn’t doing philosophy, or doing ‘good’ philosophy, or doing philosophy the ‘right way’ (all three of which are distinct). This is a bad thing.
My view is that philosophy is what you do when you want to know the answer to a question. There are different kinds of questions and some questions are easier to answer than others. Some questions have certain methods that make them easier to answer, and some questions can only be understood within the context of a method. But all questions, anywhere, at any time, about anything whatsoever, are answered by doing philosophy.
Because we can ask so many different questions, whole academic disciplines have sprouted up and organized themselves around answering particular questions. What are things made of? What makes things move? Why are some things alive and not others? How does thinking work? Answering these questions requires doing a lot of philosophy.
In some ways academic philosophy is what is left over after these questions have left the philosophy building and organized in buildings of their own. Because there are better and worse ways to answer certain questions, it makes sense to organize your efforts around answering certain questions in the way best suited to them. Finding good ways to answer good questions is when philosophy is at its best.