This is all true. In a recent thread on the subject, three people said they had only ever honed there own and only ever shaved with razors they had honed. You can do it all by yourself and everything will be just fine. The other 18 people that responded mostly had learned a little on there own and had gotten significant improvements in their edges and shaves after having met with others. While it is possible for you to be completely satisfied on your on, most prefer learning from others. I did everything backwards, because apparently that’s how I do things. Most find it easiest to do touch ups first and progress into more complex honing later. By touch ups, it is a razor that has been made shave ready by someone else and then you keep it sharp with a light honing routine. As Utopian mentioned, there are options for that. I beleive TC has a routine that after a certain number of shaves and before his edge is particularly deteriorated, he does a prescribed number of laps on his 12K Naniwa to bring it back to perfection. I have too many razors in rotation to be able to easily track those things, so I am much more disorganized. I wait until my razor is shaving poorly and then check it with a loupe, often drop down to an 8K and then go for the finisher.