Yeah, it'll probably take you a while to find your groove. Kanji memorization aside, I tend to find Japanese a generally more straightforward language than English in terms of rules since they're all much more consistent and tend to have very few exceptions, but it pretty much takes most anybody coming to it from English a while to transition to it and really have their brain click into that mode completely, so don't get discouraged if things aren't always super smooth sailing. Naturally, though, since you are just studying by yourself and aren't beholden to a class schedule or anything, you can ride those waves out a lot more naturally and just adjust your pacing without any real consequences as you've been doing. The key is to stay engaged and push yourself, but without burning out and it looks like you're doing a good job figuring out what works for you. Feel free to hit me up when you make it to the higher levels later on if you find yourself unsure of what to use for study materials since native English textbooks and whatnot dry up around the N3, lower N2 level for the most part.
One thing to bear in mind about kanji memorization is that the actual application of them matters just as much as being able to recognize them at a glance. I see a lot of new people just grind their way through all 2000-ish major kanji in an attempt to get that aspect over with, but unless you're a super genius, it'll be a few years before you've really retained all that knowledge, so I think the more important thing is to just make sure you're constantly expressing yourself using what kanji you do know so that you really get the meaning and muscle memory for writing different ones down pat. I personally never really studied kanji while particularly adhering to a schedule defined by JLPT guidelines; I mostly just started with necessities and immediate interests so I could talk about important stuff as well as stuff I liked as soon as possible and then branched out from there. Basically it's not the end of the world if you don't master all 2000 particularly quickly. If you're already at 200 within just a few months, you're already going way faster than natives do when they pick them up at school growing up; non-natives learning Japanese later in life tend to learn them on a comparatively compressed time-table, but it's still best to go easy on yourself, especially while your brain is still really getting accustomed to such a glyph-heavy writing system.
I did take N1, yeah. It's a really rough test at that level, even if you know what you're doing. I had really excellent textbooks that used the previous year's material and then I was caught by surprise when the test I took basically covered none of that stuff; it was still familiar territory since I'd studied it in Japan, but it wasn't what I'd focused on. There's also a very heavy bias on listening comprehension, which isn't inherently bad, but there's no writing portion where you're answering prompts or anything, so people like me that are much better writers than speakers in any language, English included, tend to be pretty screwed. There's also no actual speaking portion, either, which is why there's actually been a shift in recent years towards other fluency certification tests, since JLPT is about as archaic and overly Japanese in structure as it gets. Realistically speaking, the difference in skill between someone who passes N1 versus N2 isn't really that significant and a lot of foreigners land work in Japan with N2 certification, so more realistically speaking, that might be the one to really aim for for the time being. I don't regret taking N1 at all or being able to engage in Japanese at that level, obviously, but the grammar you learn at that point is for the most part so obscure that you don't tend to see it used a lot outside literature. That's great for games like Dangan Ronpa, but not otherwise always useful for just getting by in day-to-day Japan.
Gah, I'm just rambling at this point. Obviously I'm a bit opinionated when it comes to all this stuff, ahaha. I hope what I've written is at least of some use to you.
