I feel your pain, and have had similar experiences. I do feel like wisdom is inherently an "internalize for your own mind" process, and on some level, nobody c

I feel your pain, and have had similar experiences. I do feel like wisdom is inherently an "internalize for your own mind" process, and on some level, nobody can do that for you. So of course you will be scrabbling around trying to piece things together until it clicks in your own mind. I've found having a discussion with another human, who understands the topic, is very helpful. And it is one case where an "academic" setting can be useful, assuming you can actually talk to the professor rather than being forced to parse some unfathomable textbook. Even that example — a textbook — is similar to what you said. It is literally designed to help you understand a topic. And yet, my experience with them mimics yours. A lot of the material is uselessly general, and a lot of it is uselessly specific and technical. And it almost never answers the specific question you actually want to know at a given moment. So, you have to internalize the information (slowly) and eventually get there. Maybe there is an "event horizon" of me being able to absorb new material, rather than something external.