Getting started with programming

Well, I guess that isn’t really all that accurate of a title. The reality is that I’ve been studying programming for three semesters, but I’m just starting to get serious about programming… I think.
Honestly, it’s hard for me to tell where I am in the “getting serious” process. Am I currently serious? Am I learning what it means to be serious? I don’t know — all I know is that I don’t feel as competent as I’d like to feel, and it’s giving me some serious anxiety.

My first undergraduate degree was in psychology and, while I intend to eventually earn a graduate degree in psychology, I’m not so idealistic as to think that I can maintain my current standard of living with a psych B.S. alone.
[Software Development enters, stage right]
I’m leaving the military in fewer than two years, and prospect of going back to making $17,000 per year (like my last year as a civilian) was too much for me to handle. I started thinking, “what am I interested in? I’ve always been a computer geek, so maybe…?”
I signed up for a basic algorithm and problem-solving course in 2019, and I was hooked. At least, I think I was. Maybe I just liked it because it was easy. At this point, though, I’m in intermediate-level courses, and I’m not so sure if I’m having fun anymore. I can’t tell if it’s too hard, if I’m not dedicated enough, if my professor just has the vaguest instructions that have ever existed, or if I’m just fatigued from three years of full-time academia, military service, and dog-parenting, but there’s one thing I know for sure… My motivation has tanked.
Clearly. I have a barely-started Java project sitting ignored on my other monitor.

I just needed a place to get this all out in the world.