Should the meta — am I overthinking this? [v3]

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. Posting this here because the relevant subreddit has gotten too noisy lately.

Spent the last few weekends digging into this and the deeper I go the more questions I have.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not. There is a lot of conflicting advice online and most of it is from 2019. Looking for honest feedback, not validation.