Where to start as a beginner - eviltoast

My ultimate goal with learning this is I want to self host my own Monero node and eventually maybe even self host emails and after that learn docker as well.

But I am a long, long way from there.

Where do I start with something like this if I have no experience with networking?

Should I just start with learning a VPS? I just don’t like the idea of me not being able to physically control the server because I think one day Monero might be outlawed or something.

But I’ll do whatever I have to to learn.