I think your expectations of how long it takes to gain proficiency are what's off. I'm sure everyone's varies quite a bit. I've been SR shaving (daily) for 5 months and am still not able to get BBS on the neck reliably without razor burn.

It took me 1-2 weeks to get all the hairs to catch, then another 3-4 weeks to improve my technique to the point there was no razor burn. After 1-1.5 months after starting, my shaves were significantly closer than an electric, and about equal to a careful, multi-pass mach-3/fusion shave with canned shaving cream. At the 2 month point, I started working on BBS. It took another 2-3 days to learn WTG+ATG on the cheeks, underside of the jaw, and "easy" side of my neck - but 2-3 weeks (4 months "from start" point) to learn to do ATG without getting nicks or razor burn once in a while on the "tricky" areas like the chin, upper lip, and "swirly" side of my neck. I've been working on BBS over the last month. The upper lip took 3-4 days to learn to do reliably. The chin took 3-4 weeks. I'm going to need another month to get the swirly side of the neck to be BBS reliably and without occaisional razor burn.

ps: I can see the hair shafts even with a very close shave (ie: lasts 8 hours before stubble can be felt level of shave). BBS does cut the effect in half, but it's still there... I've tried the alchohol spashes to try to close the pores. Didn't work unfortunately.