It really depends on your ambitions. My opinion is that if you are "one engaging conversation away from starting a new programming/writing/music/film project" you ultimately have something entrepreneurial inside you and you want to MAKE something.

In this case, my humble advice is to not care if you don't have the skills. Start doing and you will learn. By "doing" I mean even the smallest thing: start a blog about what you want to do (I am sure you can do that), create a Facebook group to involve people and then evolve from there. If you are really excited about what you want to do you will find people ready to help you along the way. So don't worry if you don't have the skills to create something. You can still be good at engaging other people, the ones with the skills you need.

I personally think that being aware of your own strenghts and weaknesses is very important for every entrepreneur.

Howard Schultz, founder of Startbucks, many years ago said the best advice he got was to "Hire the skills you don't have" (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/...)

Add the learning part when you are already making. You will understand much more. When Facebook was getting bigger young Zuck started to read Peter Drucker's essays. And I am sure those pages where really teaching him a lot because he already did some much. They were not theoretical notions.

Hope I am answer your question.

It's important to learn your whole life long but as far as making vs. learning goes this is an easy one: you should be far more heavily slanted toward "making".

I used to read voraciously about everything because I wanted to do things the "right way." You don't learn much at all by just reading. It's when you learn the thing while you're doing it that it matters even if you're making lots of mistakes.

Be more disposed toward doing. It's the better route to success.