Slowly but surely
I do plan on doing some more work myself in the future. The shop I use does good work and they've been pretty straight with me as far as prioritizing jobs and minimizing cost, but part of the reason I got the car was to learn how to do stuff to it. I'm starting to get a little more comfortable working underneath the car, so I think I can do fluid changes and general maintenance myself so long as I block out a day to do it. Everything I read about this diff fluid change said it would take an hour to 2 hours, but I knew knowing myself and the car that it would take far longer to get the job done properly because I'm inexperienced and the car is old and nothing seems to come apart quite as easily as it does in the videos.
It's been really fun though, not just from learning stick and fixing little stuff but from meeting new people and participating in some events as well. The buddy from work that was helping me out has a beautiful 88 Corvette that he put together, so we've gone to a cars and coffee meet and gone on a couple of drives. I've also had a lot of people talk to me about it, both random people at the gas station as well as some family friends that I had no idea were into cars until now.
I also got a big thumbs up from an old guy in an f-body Camaro, which I thought was pretty damn cool.
This is pretty much where I'm at at this point. When I first got the car, I freaked out about little rattles or if the engine sounded a little different sometimes but now I've kind of just accepted it as something the car does. Once it gets up to speed and warmed up it runs like a top most of the time.