Hi @Proteu5,
Welcome to the community Michael 
I am in Melbourne 
You would be very welcome to share your journey in a topic in the forum (I wish I had a record of my early days to look back on), see @Jshanks21 My Coding Journey: Beginner to Pro
I recommend checking out the OpenZeppelin Learn guides: https://docs.openzeppelin.com/learn/
OpenZeppelin CLI 2.8 supports deploying regular contracts and the interactive CLI makes calling and sending transactions to contracts easy.
Also worth having a play with Ethernaut (smart contract security hacking game): https://solidity-05.ethernaut.openzeppelin.com/
Feel free to ask all the questions that you need.