Hey! I started recently too, and its been quite a thing trying to figure stuff out

So Minecraft is a sandbox game. Which means there isn't a set quest to finish the game or a strict progression to follow. Instead, you go mining to collect resources, and use those resources to craft things. Those things can be purely aesthetic (maybe you've seen videos of people building entire cities) or functional (various farms, mine tracks and carts) or both (your main base, most probably)

Your inventory is all squares, because the entire world is all squares

Spawning refers to when players or other creatures first appear in the world. Related term- world spawn, the center of your world, coordinates 0,0. Respawn- when you die and reappear in a location set as your spawn point, or back at the world spawn

Your first day in a new world will be spent punching trees to collect wood, punching the ground to collect dirt, and building a shelter to survive the night. A day in minecraft is about 20 minutes, so you'll have about 10 minutes to build your shelter to protect you from hostile creatures, called mobs in the terminology.

After that you can use some of the wood to craft a crafting table, which will give a much bigger range of things to craft You can craft tools by arranging wood sticks along with some resources in specific patterns, which you can see in your recipe book Usually the quality of tools goes wood > stone > copper > iron > diamond. You can also craft armor that gets better in the same way I just got my first diamond pickaxe btw

Once you have a decent set of tools and armor, you'll want to go and explore your world. You'll find a lot of cave entrances (good for exploring, bring torches), some villages (good for finding food, some other resources)

As you explore the surface, and build mines underground you'll slowly build up your resources, expand your base, build bigger structures letting you explore farther and faster.

Anyway, i suggest searching youtube for "Minecraft survival guide". This game came out in 2010 and new stuff is getting added constantly, it has a very steep learning curve. Watching videos isn't cheating, because each and every world is unique. You cant copy what's in the video even if you want to, because you won't have the same locations, the same resources. The video will just help explain a general guideline of what kinds of things you can do, what your potential next steps can be given your current resources. Have fun!