Ok here it is. I have had Embird Digitizing for over a year and other then converting a file and watching a stitchout had made no progress. Martine's post about her daughter in law gave me encouragement to try again. Looked at the manual. Yikes. My old brain just does not want to do that anymore. Once again I googled for help and came across a YouTube series created Jan 2015, that looks to me as if I can get started. I can not make the link work, so you can go to YouTube and search for the following,
Learn to Digitize Embroidery - an Introduction to Embird: Part 1 E1.
I only gave the start link, but it is a continued series by OML PATCHES. Maybe someone else will be encouraged by watching that series.
When you were a child, did you ever sit with a new sketch pad and crayons and ask "what shall I draw?"
Sue is right, think of what you would like to make. Keep it simple at first.
I personally prefer learning one thing at a time. And then play with that till I am satisfied.
The first thing I digitised in Embird were simple Christmas ornaments (to be stitched on felt) using only the line tool. The most difficult part of the process was to think out the pathing to get it jump free. I started with the one in the picture, made 6 variations till I was quite confident I would not forget how to do it (and stitched enough of them to add to Christmas cards).