For me, the best way to learn about luas capabilities and downfalls is to look at your goals with fresh eyes.
Think of how our youth think of and tasks - They haven’t been hit with the reality of constraint and so naturally, their imagination goes to greater depths than that of someone who knows the ins and outs of a given thing.
Now, with that mindset in mind, I want you to start planning projects. Get at least 2-3 under your belt that are far reaches, 2-3 that are medium (aka kinda possible, but not sure how), and 4-5 easy-peasy ones. (small stuff r* failed to include in the base game yet have functions for).
Now, with the basic knowledge of simple lua functionality, try to achieve those goals.
FOCUS REALLY HARD one of the ‘stretch’ goals. Don’t worry about optimization, etc. Focus FIRST on writing code and making it do something. Once you’ve completed the task, THEN you can start figuring out how to properly optimize, make your code readable, more stable, etc.
When you have questions, don’t talk about your entire project until the context demands it.
Why? Because (while many experienced people) here have good intentions, many will do a great job at shitting on your dreams before giving yourself a chance to answer whether it can be good.
Then you won’t gain that intimate familiarity of lua limitations, fivem limitations, module limitations, and networking limitations.
And NOTE: You WILL forget stuff (especially the stuff you don’t do often), so take NOTES! TAKE LOTS AND LOTS OF NOTES AS YOU GO. This is so you can reference stuff later and eventually memorize.
This is my path, and it’s gone pretty darn decently so far. But I’m no lua expert and there are many others here without formal training lightyears ahead of me. I just resonate with your story of having a lot going on yet still having the passion to learn!
Anyways, good luck!