My learning path was one of small steps at a time. I started watching tutorials online (there are thousands of them on youtube), I bought a few also, and each time I decided to follow a tutorial from start to finish, I always tried to add some personal variations to it, in order to make it more “unique”, sort of speaking. For example, this scene Bathroom scene. It was a combination of two Blender Guru’s tutorials. I knew it was based on somebody else’s concepts, but I didn’t feel bad about it. That’s the meaning of learning through tutorials. By doing that, I was getting more and more accustomed to blender’s “procedures & vocabulary”. That’s what I would advise a novice user to do. What really skyrocketed my work was the advice and feedback from advanced blender users here in blenderartists forums. Some of them have really opened my eyes in many fields, from minor things to paramount principles. So, that’s the way to do it. Start with something small and easy and proceed gradually to more complex stuff, and when you’re stuck at some difficult point, then it’s time to ask here in the forums, and you’ll find answers, believe me.
As for the 2.8 version, I don’t really know. It was supposed to be officially released later in October, but I don’t know if the developers team is 100% ready. Later this year maybe.
As for the hardware, if you mean a new Workstation pc appropriate for blender, I could give you some advice if you want. It’s better to start a thread in https://blenderartists.org/c/support/technical-support . Be sure to mention the budget and what exactly you want to buy (ex. if you need a new monitor too, or if you’re going to use hardware parts from your old rig, etc). I’ll try to answer there, as other members will certainly do too.
Thanks for your very positive reviews on my work. I don’t really know if I will ever be able to do this as a part time job or something like that. I have another occupation (which is time consuming). I just started to sell models in Gumroad. I’m not very optimistic about it, but I thought it’s a pity to leave them static inside my hdd’s. Whatever 
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Good luck with blender, and feel free to ask anything. If I know something about, I’ll help, be sure of that.