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I hear your concerns. First, please consider that the WORST possible outcome from being privacy conscious is ending up living in fear or limiting personal expression. Even if you live under a repressive regime you can live free in your thoughts. Please, I encourage you not to become overwhelmed, disheartened, or stop living freely out of fear! Pragmatically – Microsoft has decided to include more and more intrusive telemetry with Windows. They saw Google and Facebook making a bunch of dough from prying into your private stuff and wanted to get in on that money. This is especially troubling because the telemetry can be OS wide with Windows. If you want to really dig deep on what Windows collects start here. The only way to really control telemetry on Windows is in Education or Enterprise editions through Group Policy controls. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t offer Education or Enterprise for sale to individuals. Microsoft used to offer an “Ultimate” edition that was essentially Enterprise, but doesn’t do this anymore. There are ways to get Education or Enterprise editions and activate them ;) . This violates Microsoft TOS and is not legal. Microsoft could crack down on individual use of Enterprise or Education editions by individuals at any time, and could even pursue legal action if they really felt like making an example by crushing a little guy! Practically speaking, with Home or Pro Windows, you can toggle what they let you toggle - https://archive.ph/L9Xxc (edited link b/c AutoMod). Disconnect (unplug) network access. Boot up and toggle changes, and then connect to your network. When you say “programs for creativity” I assume you’re talking about Adobe? It’s true that Adobe is notoriously incompatible with Linux even with WINE, and especially with Adobe’s subscription model. I’m not a professional or power-user, so I don’t need Adobe products. You can check out FOSS creativity apps (even on Windows) and see if they work for you. There are creative professionals who solely use FOSS creative software, so these apps are professional grade tools (the following list is not comprehensive – but a good start): https://opensource.com/article/22/2/open-source-creative-apps EDIT: As an afterthought: It is closed source and paid ($39 for full features) but a user friendly way to control and monitor network traffic on Windows is Glasswire. It's "Ask to Connect" setting lets you block network connections per application until you allow them - so you can research what a process is and does before allowing to "phone home".
If you prefer FOSS uninstallers, you can take a look at BC Uninstaller.
That's a good starting point to read into that topic: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/