What advice would you give a novice like me to improve?
Honestly, it depends on how you want to approach chess.
If you want to have fun:
Start with rapid. Play it a little bit, then move onto blitz. Once blitz feels slow, do bullet. It's loads of fun.
If you want to get better at chess as a game:
Play lots of rapid and classical. Not as fun, but you WILL improve.
Note: Playing for fun (rapid, then blitz, then bullet) will still get you pretty far. It got me to 1800+