Kube solves a ton of really complicated problems. I think a big part of the learning curve is just understanding what those problems are/were to know why we are all doing this in the first place.
Rolling out something like Talos is a good starting point for a sandbox to play around in. When I feel like you understand the basic ideas of things that can be run in kube (deployments, cronjobs, services, ingresses, etc) this is a really great resource to level up your understanding: