Good job on using a smart, methodical approach to learning. Something that jumps out to me in your process that you didn't mention specifically is that you were disciplined enough to work at your skills on the simulator instead of just playing on it. Many of the impetuous youngsters who get on here asking about learning to fly without an instructor want to do so because they are impatient. They want to have fun with the hobby now, and figure an instructor is just going to slow them down by making them learn things. So the sim time is mostly spent hot dogging the plane instead of working on precision flying in all kinds of wind. Then when they get out into the real world they aren't prepared for cross winds or gusts or a plane that doesn't fly exactly right or that is out of trim. You've used the sim exactly as it was meant to be, as a tool to learn on.