Question from a noob

I have a question that might have been asked 1 million times already, but I couldn't find any posts at least. I really love the concept of the game. Whenever I start a new apocalypse game I start out by finding a nice home base. But once I have that I have no idea what to do from there. I read some books I loot a bit here and there, but I have no idea how to progress the game. I want to build my own base some day, or plant some stuff and be strong enough to explore the world map. But reading books only boosts stats. It doesn't even progress them. And when it comes to carpentry I can only do the most simple stuff. How do I lvl up? How do I know what I need to loot and what I need to do to progress the game?

Now after a bit of frustration about this I just took a car I found and explored the map a bit. But even then I just keep finding cool loot that I don't have the capacity to carry with me. How the hell do I progress? There just isn't any info I can find about this.