Thanks to everyone on these boards for being so generous in sharing your wisdom here.
I use shorthand every day and find it immensely fun, useful, and rewarding, but I readily accept that I'm still an absolute beginner. This is a difficult skill to learn in isolation.
I've not been on this site for a while because it seemed to have gone quiet. Only on returning today did I comb through the older posts and discover a goldmine of advice and vintage articles addressing the exact challenges I'm encountering right now. I'd overlooked all that before; if you're new here, I highly recommend browsing through the archives.
The internet can be a bottomless hole of life-stealing distractions and fleeting, pointless flashes. But for those of us with an interest in esoteric things like shorthand which have been relegated to the past yet still offer tremendous value, it's a real comfort and help to find others who not only share our interest in this skill but have mastered it!
So... thank you!
(by Hamish for group greggshorthand)