Weekly discussion: gear recommendations I keep coming back to [v4]

I tried three different approaches and none of them felt quite right. Not sure if this is the right place to ask, mods please remove if it is not.

Quick context: I am relatively new to this and trying to find my footing. I want to write something more comprehensive about this later but starting with a quick post to gather thoughts.

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