Where to Start for a Self-Teacher/Learner

[Zynux]

Hello, first time posting here. Not sure if this question is relevant for this website's purposes, but here goes.

A little backstory: Because of my passion for game creation all my life, I have written down, brainstormed, created stories and thought up many intricate game ideas and have dreams to create a game business in order to become a Game Designer/Director (entrepreneurship, basically).

However, I want to make sure that game creation is something that I really want to do. I don't want to go to school and spend all this money only to realize that maybe game creation is not up my ally.

Therefore, I figured that the best way to see if game creation is right for me is to try it out myself (since I am a great Self-teacher/learner) by starting small and taking baby steps in the programming department (maybe to create fan games or something). If I want to be a game director, I feel that I need to at least be able to understand and communicate with the programming side of game creation.

The problem is that I want to get into programming, but I have no programming knowledge whatsoever, but want to learn. You can say that I want to teach myself this to somewhat “prepare” for what is to come in the future (hopefully), but don't know where to begin. Therefore, I would definitely like some advice as to maybe books, websites, and other sources for someone who wants to self-teach themselves programming and game design.

Thanks in advance.