I know the feeling. Luckily for me though, I am a student on a games development course so I am getting teaching on coding languages, making 3d objects for games, photoshop skills and what not. It's hard work so it pays off in the end.
If you wanna make an indie game, a good thing to do is start making mods for games then start working on your own project when you are confident enough to do so, not ripping off games that have already been done though. A good game engine that I use is either UDK or Unity. As for making things for the game, use 3DS Maya. Maya is compatible with Unity (not sure with UDK though (the files can be exported as .fbx which are used in both, but still not sure) and all you really have to learn in Maya is how to make objects for games and Unity is fairly easy to get around. Youtube tutorials are very very useful. I say these two programs are easy to use but 3DS Maya is an expensive kit, as is most modelling software. Currently, blender is your best bet.