Developing film at home isn't an excessively complex or difficult task.
Controlling dust might drive you slightly insane, but a bit of care, attention, and fans with large HEPA filters go a long way to making it easier.
For getting your film loaded onto reels, I'm a fan of a dark bag on my desk while watching things. It isn't a long process, and I just tent the bag up with the empty film developing tank I'm going to be loading, and sometimes hang a bit of the dark bag off the edge of the desk to get a bit more vertical space to work with.
Round pointed scissors are a far nicer choice than sharp pointed ones.
For your chemistry, read up on the different ones that you can find in your region, and pick one that you like the sound of. They all have different pros and cons.
Black and White film and papers are a little more accessible and straightforward, and an excellent place to start even if you want to play with colour processes in the future.
Digital processing and prints are as valid of an option as you want them to be for your art. It is your art, and no one else gets to say what makes you happy with it.
[If you're not already comfortable to the controls for adjusting exposure, reading a meter, and playing with things like depth of field, then I would actually suggest a cheap dSLR and its instant feedback to get your head around the core basics, rather than trying to learn both those and film processes at the same time. You'll still have some minor adjustments when you switch to film, but I figure it is better to quickly build a solid foundation to extend off of, rather than slowly piecing one together while risking pitfalls from the lag between adjusting your settings and seeing the results on film.]
Black and White paper has a solid overlap in general processing compared to film, but just remember most black and white films aren't safe to handle under a red light that you can handle [most? all?] black and white papers under. Legit have no idea if there is a current black and white paper that can't be handled under red safe light, but there are only a handful of current production films that are safe to handle with a red safe light on.
Sure. But if you have a basic darkroom already set up it's really not that difficult to make some so-called "contact prints."
To extend on Mr Bill's comments: Of course there is nothing to say you can't play with your negatives with different processes. Scanning/digitizing your negatives also lets you invert an image and explore it a bit more without having to visualize the inversion in your head. I'm currently rather behind on my digital cataloguing, but kind of prefer it as a reference compared to the negative sheets, and I never got into the habit of of doing contact sheets to go with my negative storage.
But I also like being able to keyword and sort a digital catalogue, then go find the physical negative. But to have any actual value you do need to invest the effort to actually implement a system, and then keep putting in the effort to keep things organized and maintained. Just be warned of the pain of a growing backlog...
They aren't everyone's cup of tea, but personally I like some of the contact prints from my 6x6 and 6x7 cameras. Haven't tried any out of a 35mm negative, and feel that might be pushing things too small, but I only have a handful of rolls in 35mm, and haven't had a frame I want to try yet.
And you don't have to finalize a setup anytime soon. Photograph and develop your film, and play with it by way of digitization for awhile if that's an easy route. Maybe add contact prints in after awhile as you get together the bits of gear like trays and stuff and decide what sort of paper and chemistry you want to work with. Maybe eventually add a full enlarger to your kit. If your negatives are properly developed, fixed, and washed, then they won't really care if they're printed immediately or carefully stored and printed a decade from now.
They're negatives, they don't actually have feelings of their own. Do what works for you.
