I think this might be the main issue with Kotlin and “rookies”. Kotlin borrows a lot, but also hides a lot and expects you to know the internals to actually understand what’s going on. At the same time if offers a lot of “shortcuts” which can help creating an easier to read code, if used correctly. But if used without any deeper understanding of why these shortcuts exist in the first place? I’m sure this could end up in a disaster 
So, answering the original question:
If you just tried Python and found C being too hard (C is actually considered one of the most straightforward programming languages) I’d suggest spending some more time with something more “classic”. C should be a good start I think, I started with PASCAL (but it was a long time ago ) and also find it a great first programming language. Then try some OOP (Java?) and after that Kotlin might be a good choice.