I'd say, first of all, use an existing Emacs setup, like Doom [0]. It's got lots of very reasonable defaults, so you will spend less time being mad at Elisp and more time doing something productive. In addition, if you are used to Vim, you won't have to relearn keybindings.

I personally haven't got to try org-roam yet (I use a somewhat similar workflow though). In terms of learing org-mode, I recommend trying org-capture to quickly write down your thoughts, tasks, etc, and then seeing where it goes from there. I started with just an org-mode file with pile of notes and I gradually discovered the features when I needed them.

[0] https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs