I really like the idea of emacs and have even tried to get into it several times but I think the fact that there's decades and decades of accumulated API for configuring and operating it it's really difficult.
I think it's distinctly possible I'll have to make my own emacs if I want to use emacs.
Someone tell me there's a minimal emacs that is simple to get started with so I can learn the philosophy without also having to learn 199 other things at the same time
Goo Truther 
@amy a long time emacs user's idea of a 'minimal, starter' config will invariably be anything but. I very briefly tried Spacemacs when I first tried Emacs, and obviously that was just too much in terms of features too.
I ended up reading a lot of 'Mastering Emacs' blog posts and writing my own init.el. A good start is configuring emacs core settings via M-x customize menu within Emacs, then making those permanent in your init.el, and selectively adding features you need, as needed, with a preference to builtin features from new versions instead of packages from Melpa or whatever to avoid creating an unmaintainable configuration. For example, avoid advice that tells you to install a package for line-numbering instead of using the new Emacs line numbering from the more recent versions (26+). Emacs has been going through lots of breaking API changes and huge new features only found in blog posts and changelogs, so anything pre- Emacs 26 is uselessly out of date.
It might be worth looking at recent tutorial videos, not for the video advice, but to see if the uploaders have their config uploaded for beginners. You can try pruning excess from one that already looks kinda intuitive to you, and start from there.
I ultimately just bit the bullet and read the elisp tutorial within M-x info during manic episode in order to glean enough to write a few of my own init config steps and options. However I decided to get into Emacs right when these changes were in full swing, so hopefully you won't have to!
