That takes away a lot of stress. Knowing to just get started and ignore the best approach instead of just a getting started approach and learn as you go.

For the longest time I wanted to get rid if my google drive or google calendar and host one myself.

Email as I have read is something more advanced but I would like to self host my email as well.

Photos eventually too.

As a lot of people have recommended nextcloud that seems like where my interest might be heading.

As a starting point. Are there any hardware recommendations for a toy home server?

That seems like a sensible approach.

The whole area around selfhosting not just the deployment keeps me in somewhat of an analysis paralysis. Like what a reverse proxy is and why it is beneficial, how to set up and configure ssl and the whole area about not using a compromised service kind of keep me from starting.

Locally and not connected to the Internet might be the best way to get started and then I will hopefully someday be able to remotely use my services.

Trash guides did not show me anything when I tried to look them up. What exactly is that?

I am not unfamiliar with Linux.

Kind of lucky/unlucky as a broke student I did not have money to buy a new Windows machine.

Now I am kind of glad about it.

Docker on the other hand I have had barely any contact with it so far. So I definitely check that out.