(assuming you are in the US).
Go to Amazon, buy an ESP32 beginner kit, which should come with an ESP32 dev board, a handful of different sensors and components, and a breadboard and some wires. It will also have some sample code.
Go through a few of the basic modern IoT "hello world" examples, like making a web-enabled temperature sensor. Then google for "ESP32 [foo]", where foo is some random idea that you have for pretty much anything you can imagine that has even the remotest reason to be internet-connected.
Assuming that you are comfortable with at least semi-advanced software development, learning basic embedded stuff with ESP32 or Arduino is pretty easy. There is no operating system, or heavy stack, which can sometimes make things like a Raspberry Pi more overwhelming to start with in terms of embedded stuff.
For learning, Adafruit and Sparkfun have a lot of good material. Lots of nice hardware too that one can buy. Hackaday is a good place to visit couple of times a week to find interesting stuff. Then there are many good YouTube channels for learning electronics as well, search the internet for some tips and try some of them out.
Go through a few of the basic modern IoT "hello world" examples, like making a web-enabled temperature sensor. Then google for "ESP32 [foo]", where foo is some random idea that you have for pretty much anything you can imagine that has even the remotest reason to be internet-connected.
Assuming that you are comfortable with at least semi-advanced software development, learning basic embedded stuff with ESP32 or Arduino is pretty easy. There is no operating system, or heavy stack, which can sometimes make things like a Raspberry Pi more overwhelming to start with in terms of embedded stuff.