[roberthahn]

I expect you're going to get a lot of good advice. My small contribution is this: whatever you do, document it. Write down the date, what you did, what settings you tweaked. (or use Github to manage your changes - that still counts as documentation!)

Someday something's going to click for you and you'll realize you should have done something differently, but you won't remember what you did (or how to undo/change it). Keeping good documentation - especially as you're learning, is going to save you from wiping and re-installing your machine.

[kickaha]

This is great advice! I can vouch for it---I am no longer a young man and if I don't write it down it's gone. Just for the stuff I've done so far, it has saved my bacon countless times.

Looking at you, ~/.emacs.d/init.el. :-)