Yeah these are common complaints, or problems/obstacles, whatever you want to call them. The simple truth is the user experience on Steemit.com is terrible. The website is lacking super basic functionality for a social media platform or a blogging platform, so whatever you want to use it for will pretty much be frustrating :( The Discord communities can be very helpful to bridge that gap - there are a lot of interest-specific as well as general Steem communities on Discord, and making friends there (which does require a time investment to hang out in a chat room) can help.
There really isn't any magic shortcut, if you don't want to hang out in a chat community it is very very difficult to build up an engaged follower base here. Btw have you tried out busy.org? It is one of the many alternatives to steemit.com, you use your same username and keys and it displays all the same content, but has many added features including a favorites feature. Good luck!
Thanks @carlgnash for your attention and effort. I must admit, it is my responsibility to absorb and understand all the resources available. Yet, just moments ago I gave up on trying to login to Steem.chat and Steemit.chat. Both were unresponsive. I can log on to Discord, but where to start other than my two generous friends who have better things to do than help newbies? These friends are valuable associates and I don't want to lose them!
Well I just took a quick look at your blog - looks like SteemSTEM is the obvious first step for you, have you joined their Discord server yet? If not here is an invite: https://discord.gg/RmQWeHt
See, here I go again asking for help...sorry.
I'll try busy.org...thanks!