Just like Clojure, getting over the intimidation factor of Emacs is 90% of the battle. It takes a few weeks of self-enforced daily use to get your brain around Emacs, but once you do, you'll find that it is well worth the effort. Then you discover how the other major modes work and there is simply no going back.

I would suggest just getting acclimated to using the basics navigation keys, then when you find yourself using the mouse too often for some certain task, look up the hot key to do that task.

I started up by learning:

C-f, C-b, C-p, C-n, then:

M-f, M-b, then:

C-a, M-a, C-e, M-e, then:

C-[space], C-w, M-w, C-y

It really is a slow process of learning a few keys at a time, but you'll find that once you understand the mnemonics and get your muscle memory in line, you'll find that you can learn several key-bindings quickly. The initial hump is sort of steep, but then it goes really fast.