Honestly, just commit to Inkscape. It’s not impossible, and it’s not even counter intuitive once you understand vectors. You can use simpler programs, sure, but you’ll eventually be like “why doesn’t my simple program do X or Y?” That’s because you’ve outgrown it. You won’t outgrow Inkscape.
I’m a fan of Tavmjong Bin’s tutorials:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/index.html
They’re for a slightly older version of inkscape so occasionally you have to figure out what menu things are in, but it’s thorough and really simple.