Emacs is daunting, I've used it since grad school in the 80's, and I'm still familiar with only a couple of hundred packages/extensions available out of thousands that are available. Likewise, I use maybe a couple of hundred commands and key bindings (out of thousands available--Emacs interactive help with finding the commands makes this possible).

I can imagine how hard it must be to learn the basics buried within a mountain of functionality. The way I learned to use Emacs originally was by learning to use a stripped down Emacs-like editor that ran on my home PC running MS-DOS. This editor used the same basic key bindings and supported the fundamental operations one uses to edit files: navigation, directory browsing, reading and saving files and so forth, all with the same keys that full blown Emacs uses.

Instead of installing Emacs, try installing micro-Emacs (its actual name is mg). This should run on Linux, MacOS, or Windows. On the Mac, you can install mg using homebrew. This is a perfectly good editor, and it uses the keys and commands that make up most of the ones I use every day. It just has fewer features, no Org mode, no image browsing, no support for git, no Email clients, no GPG support, no Voice output, no games, etc. It's just a solid text editor that will run in text mode.

Within a few days of using mg, you will be able to navigate around a document, open and save files, browse directories, and know how to get basic help within the editor. Then try Emacs and only add extensions as you need or want them.