help with starting out

Hello list.  I have been struggling with starting a conlang. I have taken
French, German and Latin in school, studied Esperanto and looked at many
conlangs and read the faq's on conlanging and yet I fall into the same trap
of creating an unwieldy grammar system that's too complicated and artificial.
I seem to always create inflections that seem to be more systematic than
inflective. Can anyone give me some words of advice,  or some words of
encouragement  =) ?    thanks.

Jason