The hard part is putting in the time to practice every day. You can’t learn music without many many hours of practice. This is something only you can figure out, so while your question is good, I can’t answer it for you.
Don’t overlook lessons. They are generally fairly cheap. Lessons give you a set of songs to learn that you have a chance at (many songs are too complex to play at an acceptable level - there is a reason everyone starts with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star: Mozart wrote it to be an easy first song), choosing good songs is often hard at your level. Lessons also give you half an hour of practice a week (at the lesson) and generally the embarrassment of having to tell your teacher you didn’t practice gets you another half hour! Lessons also force you to admit you did really bad in some section and go back and redo it instead of moving on. There is nothing about lessons you can’t teach yourself - but most people will not do the above things and it greatly limits their progress.
Before choosing an instrument, remember one of the fun things is to play with others. Thus finding a group you can play with is a useful thing. This can be hard - some groups are jerks to anyone who isn’t a master (if you practice 8 hours a day you can join them in as little as 3 years, but most of us will never be good enough) - but others are very nice to beginners. If you find such a group ask them what they need, sometimes they will know that some sound is missing and so you have reason to learn that, and since the sound is missing they will be even more welcoming of you because even when bad you can have enough good moments that add to the group sound.
You can appeal - but appeals are rarely agreed to. An appeal isn’t about the facts in most cases - it is about was the law correctly applied and if so is the law constitutional.