Congratulations, Ben. What is it?
You're starting with the right approach. Get to know your camera inside-out. Your aim should be to get to the stage where you can operate without having to look at where the buttons are. And that just takes practice, practice and more practice. The better you know your camera, the less time you have to think about what buttons you have to press once your own location. You can then concentrate on looking and seeing.
That's fine. That's what CiC is about.
On the subject of posting images for comment, you may find it useful to have a read of this -
How to Get Effective Feedback for your Posted Images. Doing what it says in this post always helps people provide more constructive feedback.