pull down to refresh

I recently went through a similar journey. I had bitcoin node and didn't want to run an all-in-one solution. I pieced together bitcoind, tor, lnd, and thunderhub through docker containers. That could work for Windows too. If you're interested I might post a docker compose write up
Educating myself. I run a full node to use with my cold wallet. However, I'm not sure where or how to jump into the lightning network. I'm not a fan of the all-in-one solutions(umbrel, citadel, etc). I run my own servers at home, so I'm happy to run LND in a docker container, but then what? I'd have to fund and manage channels? So I use BlueWallet. But, honestly, the biggest hurdle for me at the moment is vendors. There are no local (I'm in the bay area) shops that take LN. For online only purchases, its just as convenient to make an on-chain transaction...
Like I said educating myself.
First wallet: Ledger nano x because it was easy to setup and get going.
Latest wallet: MK4, because I wanted to geek out and stack sats.