Any chance you could first give it a try with other languages? I know lots of people would swear by C++, but from all the scripting and programming languages I learned (and that's quite a couple) I found C++ to be the least intuitive, least elegant and least easy to learn.

Not trying to say you shouldn't learn C++ (it's what most companies are looking for, after all), but getting into a more comfortable language first might help keeping your long-term motivation.
(And makes you more versatile on the market, too.)