I am close to releasing an iOS Camera app (yes another one lol) called Invisible Camera. It's a minimal app that works the way I like to shoot with my Fujifilm camera: focus on what I see, quickly apply a look / filter with a slider and shoot. The processing pipeline reduces the default color science applied by iOS to result in a more pleasant look.
What I did this year was draft all the things I wanted to achieve, check roughly how long it takes to achieve them - some have deadlines, like driver license test, which has a specific date - split them by quarters (Q1,Q2, and so on), some are more about consistency and repeated practice that culminates into being able to perform something at a higher level of execution - e.g. bass guitar and music theory. During each quarter I focus on what is there and try to limit my time around those things. I adjusted my calendar, reminders, etc to help me stay on track.
I thik focusing on a few things every 3 months and tracking time/sessions/effort put into can be helpful. I think something good happens regardless and you know for sure you did your best.
I did 4y of my career like that - never worked with VB though. ASP.NET got replaced with Go, Node, SWift and other languages and frontend I have done mobile, desktop, web.
Some of my colleagues from that period also have this background but they are more focused on backend for sure.
You can join the beta https://testflight.apple.com/join/LEJk313o
When I can, I am also working on some features for https://midicircuit.com Beta here - https://testflight.apple.com/join/pNyAUEac