Welcome, you have indeed picked the right forum, there are some good cooking minds amongst these pages..
If I were first starting into cooking I would start with home made bread and pasta, they took the longest for me to get right, I wish I started sooner.
There are a few reasons to start with pasta and bread though.
1 they have a huge range, you can start with a basic bread and a basic pasta and over time add and improve your recipe to something really complex and special.
2 the ingredients are probably already in your kitchen
3 the tools needed are also probably in your kitchen too
4 they are easy to start with and very rewarding
5 they most definitely taste better from your kitchen than from the store...
I would start with a nice italian dinner...
A basic bread recipe simple, flour, water, yeast, and salt. {olive oil maybe} You can mix and knead by hand if you don't have a stand mixer... You literally need them ingredients, an oven pan or stone and a spoon.
A flavored butter, this is as easy as it sounds, butter, whipped with sugar and honey or garlic and basil, the sky is the limit...
Then for pasta start with a basic pasta thats going to be flour, eggs, and olive oil mixed with a table fork, rolled with a bottle, and cut with a knife on your counter top..
A nice basic pasta sauce, onions, tomato, salt, sugar, and pepper...
That will give you a start, make it once a week and add/change something every time... Also its nice to buy 1 new kitchen tool per week, something simple like week 2 buy a fluted pastry wheel for cutting the pasta a little different, you can get a double sides one for $7 from nor pro.. Week 2 buy a nice bread knife like the victorinox 10.5" wavy edge for $35.
So changing the menu is easy, week one do the basic, week 2 add cornmeal to the bottom of your bread and a little sugar to the dough, add meatballs to the menu and try a new pasta cut like farfalle {easy cut a rectangle- 2 smooth sides and 2 fluted then pinch the center}, and maybe change something about your sauce that you noticed you didn't like las time, maybe some red flake, or fresh garlic, or butter, etc...
I started this way, now I make ravioli, lasagna, gnocchi, pierogi, so many different sauces I couldn't list them, french bread, sour dough, italian, rolls, loaves, braids, its endless...
And the best part is, I can have 6 cups of flour, some olive oil, 3-4 eggs, 4 fresh tomatoes, a couple onions, a packet of instant yeast, water, garlic, salt, and pepper and with just a stove, fork, and pan make an italian dinner that will rival most restaurants...
If you start this way some day you will be hand rolling your own spinach ricotta ravioli in a lemon butter cream sauce, while your 5 braid french loaf is rising in a flax couche...
Then once you are comfortable with your pasta, bread, sauce skills, you can start looking into other skills like roasts, soups, casseroles, and on and on and on...