Hi NEWOLDGUY
So, I took a look through a few of your games - mostly the 13x13 games - and I have a few general suggestions for you.
First of all - I would strongly encourage you to get more familiar with the concept of a living group:
In many of your games, I noticed you making eye-less sticks, specifically creating one long group that keeps getting longer - kind of like Tron light cycles.
Yes, you keep expanding your liberties in such a strategy but - unless that group can make two eyes or unconditionally capture their surrounding groups, it will eventually become a dead group, long before your opponent spends to stones to finally capture it. The OGS score estimator is a good early-warning system in this regard.
Because this game has such a steep learning curve (as you mentioned) I’ve spent some time trying to figure out how to explain the necessary change in mental framework to non-Go players, because it is so different from so many games you may have tried before. I wrote a whole 19x19 FOR BEGINNERS series and - because you mostly play 9x9 or 13x13, that may not be of interest for you - or the material may be too dense
However, I am wondering if you might benefit from my most recent article on SHAPE
Specifically just the first half of the article where I describe the different shapes in Go, and how they work together - rather than the sample game which forms the 2nd half of the article.
Rather than expanding one continuous group (which can be very useful in particular contexts, but not always appropriate) - learning about shape will help you play lightly - i.e. knowing when to leave spaces between your stones, and figuring out how to connect them into functional frameworks down the road if and when they’re challenged.
If you like that article, I’ve embedded links to the earlier ones, feel free to have a look if and when you have time. There’s a lot of content there, so I understand it may be a bit overwhelming.
But yeah, wrapping one’s mind around Go involves absorbing a LOT of new mental frameworks, and - until you get a handle on all of the different underlying dynamics that are shaping the game - you will continue hitting your head against those seemingly invisible brick walls, and having your groups run out of chances to make life long before you realize they’re dead