Okay, cool. Nice to meet you. Classic liberals are the only decent kind imo... I'm probably identifying in any of the major political groups. I might say something like voluntarist free market libertarian agorist :P
I'm a total noob and boob. After nearly 4 years here. It's a learning curve indeed. Too steep for me, most of the time! Not that I'm old, but certainly not 20 and sharp, either. And I've used computers all my life (PCs, not smart devices, mind you). Problem mainly is that I never learned the technical side of computers, and Hive is still being built. I'm mostly just a content-creator here.
I've never even messed with Eth, personally. I put what little BTC I had into Steem (the main chain Hive forked off a year ago) in early 2018 (wow, that was a terrible financial decision, but now finally the price is starting to turn around). So I've been a bag holder now for a few years, haha. Not that I'm much of an investor, more of a saver.
Check out hive engine when you get a sec, it's fairly easy. You just need your posting key (same one you're using to comment right now). It's free to log in, browse your wallet, check the market, and so on. It's even free to trade, and send/receive. It only costs (1%) when you decide to pull those funds out, for example, to convert them to HIVE and bring them onto the Hive blockchain (for powering up, spending, etc). So it's free, until it's not free but still cheap :) You might have some tokens in there already even though you just joined.
Interesting to hear your story of struggle! Been a while since I started a new account. Sounds... not very fun. But I'm glad you persevered thus far.