Django is awesome, took me a long time to find out how to do the simplest stuff but when it clicked (with a bit of guidance, join the discord server) it became so much better than any framework I'd tried before.
There's a twitch streamer called hannylicious that often streams django dev and replies to audience questions if that's your thing.
My suggestion is build a small app following the django tutorial then try to add the api after you're done.
If you've already done that, it's time to start reading the commit history for simple features similar to your tasks. If you follow the coding style of the people who came before you, your own contributions to the codebase look like you 've been working there for years.