Where to begin?

Every so often I get contacted by a new woodworker looking for advice along the lines of “where do I begin?” It’s not an easy question to answer - and for one person the answer might be this, for another, that. It’s certainly different now than when I began woodworking - easier in some ways. Not sure if the opposite is true. 

In 1975 I inherited a basement full of mid-20th-century tools - tablesaw, jointer, drill press, jigsaw, router & bits, sanders. Some hand tools too, but my first attempts mostly focused on the tablesaw. I think there was a bookcase, I know there was a three-or-four-shelf hanging shelving unit. I must have been to the public library for some how-to books, but I forget now. 

I tried an evening woodworking class at our local high school once. I wanted to make an axe handle and had a bone-dry piece of riven ash an elderly neighbor had given me. I was armed with a wooden spokeshave, though I didn’t know the name of that tool.  The instructor suggested I buy an axe handle at the hardware store and make the class project instead - a rustic pine coffee table, to be stained dark, dark brown. I dropped out of the class after that first session. 

I’ve told before how I got introduced early on to the magazine Fine Woodworking and even though much of it was over my head, I subscribed and read every word for many years. And pored through the ads and listings in the back - tool catalogs, woodworking classes, books - all that sort of stuff.