Hey, @bashadow.
I bought my first Raspberry Pi about two months ago now, too. I also started learning Python. Unlike you, I haven't done hardly anything with it. The CanaKit version I got came with the 128 GB card. I've also got some various electronics that I'm supposed to be able to plug into or use with the Raspberry Pi, if I ever get the gumption to do it. I spent a couple years considering the purchase only to shelve the whole thing.
As you say, it can definitely takes some time (which is fine as you're learning), but in the end, there's only so much of it to be used.
Good to hear from you Glen, hope all is going well there. It has been fun and busy making trying to learn. I want to try and get away from the big corporations, like google and microsoft, plus I needed a winter activity.
The Raspberry-Pi is not that good for image processing, but for everyday surf the web it works fine, it plays video's and I'll have to check and see if it will do movies from amazon prime. But I mostly got it to try and learn a little bit about programming, so I don't crash and burn my desktop, even though it is getting old.