Thanks for so many replies! I'm going to spend the next few hours dissecting all of this information and then dive into research.

The take away message I got from seemingly everyone was to first decide WHAT I want to build, then find the best language. Teach myself using fun, interesting examples, and keep plugging away no matter the difficulty. Also, I should take full advantage of the wealth of information that can be found online. Lastly, since I'm already in the web-design field (for the one person that asked I own my own small web/graphic design firm), I might wanna stick with PHP or Java (or Python / Ruby).

Again, thank you.