Well, KDR summed it all up pretty well, but there are a few things I could add. First of all, if you wish to be a designer, write design documents and keep them. Make them pretty brief (a few hundred words), or even just keep a notebook of ideas. Even if they don't ever ammount to anything, writing is an important skill that you'll have improved. Writing is important if you're a designer.
Another thing to consider is learning the very basics of programming. If you can do this, then you'll know much better what ideas of yours can actually be implementsed, and could even earn brownie-points from programmers by suggesting ways in which they could be implemented. I'm a bit of a
Python fan myself, and there are lots of
good tutorials out there. I think the language of choice for most coders of console games would be C or C++, but they can be difficualt to learn, especially if you aren't planning to use them full-time.
Othe than that,
GamaSutra (you need to sign up) is not only a pretty good news site, but it has regular articles from people who work in the industry.
I'm not a modeller, so I won't really be able to help you with that, but another free piece of somtware you could check out is
Wings3D. I've heard some people like it more than Blender.