I would honestly just start out with either Spacemacs or Doom Emacs. There is a lot of information on these 'distributions' and many YouTube videos, as well. These 'distros' will allow you to quickly get a feel for the power of Emacs, because they contain sane defaults that will enable you to get a quick feel of what Emacs is capable of. After doing this, you might decide to scrap them and start with a default Emacs installation that you slowly build up. But that is a huge investment of time and you should at least try these popular alternatives before you go into the crazy time sink of 'rolling your own' system. I realize that many purists might take issue with this suggestion, but it's what worked for me.