Gotta Start Somewhere
I'll start with a list of things I've been playing with this week:
Ventoy: https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html This is handy for having a single USB drive that can boot lots of install or rescue OS images.
blackarch: https://www.blackarch.org/ Installed on an old laptop. That's a truly immense set of pen testing tools.
Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/ Makes a mesh out of Wireguard connections. Very slick. I very quickly bumped into the 20 system limit for the free tier, but that's because I have too many Raspberry Pis.
I was using a hub for Wireguard at Digital Ocean. That works well enough, but it routes everything though the hub. Tailscale's setup is easy and clean.