I’m kind of an unusual case haha because even before I started learning the language, I was spending most of my free time watching Japanese media without subtitles (professional wrestling 
), and my twitter feed was half in Japanese already (thanks to following a bunch of Japanese wrestlers), so from the moment I started learning the language, I was constantly trying to understood what I could, and puzzle out tweets and such.
I never really had a period of feeling afraid of trying to read, because for me, the whole process of becoming literate in Japanese has been extremely thrilling, because it feels like gradually gaining access to this world that I spent over a year and a half looking into longingly, but not being able to understand. So anything that I could understand was a beautiful bonus, and anything that was still beyond me was something I just had to let go, like I was used to doing.
But the first media that I made a real effort to try to read in its entirety was a manga called 大海原と大海原, which was the manga selected by the absolute beginners book club at the time. It was definitely above my level (I wasn’t even halfway through my beginner textbook, and was maybe level 15 or so on WK?), but since I had the support of the book club thread, I was able to figure out what was happening in the story.
So I highly recommend trying to read a book along with the absolute beginners book club here once you start feeling a little more comfortable with reading! It’s a great environment to start out in, and you’ll have a lot of help available when you have questions!
I’ve recently moved onto an ambitious translation project that is still way above my level, but if I’m not doing the work, then no one else will, so it’s very motivating, especially since it’s time-sensitive haha . I think a lot of language learning is just throwing yourself into things that you don’t feel quite ready for. It can be hard and sometimes frustrating, but you’ll be surprised at how much you’re able to understand 