Where do I begin?

Okay, so some of you may or may not know that I mentioned my desire to learn how to do some very basic ROM hacking last week. I spoke with Ryusui on youtube about how I wanted to re-translate Breath of Fire, only to learn that even someone as good as Ryusui encountered many problems with his project (like how the ROM's structure is disorganized and would require some complex workarounds) and has since put it on hiatus. During our conversation, he also mentioned that it would be a very daunting task for me to do such a thing, seeing as I know virtually nothing about hacking, much less ROM programming.

So I ask you, the FF6 Hacking Team, where do I go from here? What can I do to get familiar with ROM hacking as a whole? Find tutorials on how to use WindHex32? Learn more about hex, binary and ASCII in general? Looks like I made a foolish mistake for wanting to do such a task like ROM hacking. I'm trying not to be too hard on myself right now, but, suffice to say, this realization has been very sobering.

I need to learn how to crawl before I learn how to walk. Where should I begin?