How community norms — am I overthinking this? [v1]

I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.

Quick context: I am relatively new to this and trying to find my footing.

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have. I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right.