Hi Tony (@pantsme).
Thanks for introducing yourself 
Great to have you here.
If you haven’t done so already, I recommend looking at:
- OpenZeppelin SDK: First project - https://docs.openzeppelin.com/sdk/2.5/first
- Gas Station Network: Starter kit - Using Gas Station Network starter kit on a local network
- Ethernaut: smart contract security game - https://ethernaut.openzeppelin.com/
You can also have a read and add to: What are your top three recommendations for a new developer in the space?
Ask (and answer) all the questions that you need.
Also you can contribute to the open source projects of OpenZeppelin: https://github.com/openZeppelin/. My contributions so far are mostly typos in the documentation but I got to add some code to OpenZeppelin Contracts.