Welcome and thanks for the shoutout. Glad the lurking has helped and anytime you read a Chris post, you'll always learn. The man has a real heart for teaching.

With that said, I'll toss out some thoughts on those questions:

Goals:

Funny thing about guitar, it's not like a work project or a race where there is an end or a winner. Ya know, a clearly definable goal. Guitar is harder to really place a specific goal. Over the years of playing guitar I've learned that goals tend to be situaional. I never had an ultimate end goal other than to not be crappy. After I cleared that hurdle it became more of what kind of things I wanted to learn. Whether it be a technigue, style, riff or a song. The first thing was to be able to get myself to the capability where I could point to a 'thing' I wanted to learn and know that I could do it. Even then, there are limits I have to work through.

Goal number one is to have fun playing. Period. Do not make it drudgery. Sure, there is some part of applying yourself and working on things that don't immediately seem fun but save time to just bash away too. Playing is ultimately an emotional experience so let your heart kinda do the leading and use your head to navigate where your heart tells you to go.

Strumming:

Read here about my recent experience. Hot tip of the day; play along with stuff. Your timing might be naturally good but when you play to an actual song, that'll get you up to speed. That streaming songs thing you mentioned is a great idea.

Part of being better at timing is when the other parts of playing are more natural. Chord changes, notes and all that stuff will make you have to think about it when you're starting out. When it becomes more natural, you will find a natural swing will come to you. Right now, it's likely you're inside your head a bit and not just groovin'. Which is ok, the brain is an amizing thing but still..focusing on multiple things is hard.

Books:

Though you have some good song and instructional stuff, read general guitar stuff like at Guitar World. Don't spend all your reading time learning stuff. Hear what guitar players say about their life with guitar.

Advice:

Have a good time all the time. Ha!

Ok, there's that..But really, you're playing because you want to enjoy it. Don't forget that. I used to really apply myself in my shred days and really get my playing down. Really grind out my technique and try to be fast and clean. It was what ya did in the late 80's. It worked. But the truth is, I would always just bash away at some point when practicing for the looseness and physical release too.

Think of it this way, you go through the rigamarole of traveling to a new city, when you get there, you probably want to do something cool. Otherwise, why did you travel? Don't foget that as you travel in your learning that that every once in a while to enjoy something at the current destination of your playing journey.

Note: I went on a group trip with friends and 'friends of freind' back in the 90's and seriously, some of those 'friends of friends' were total sticks in the mud. Never wanted to do anything but sit around the hotel(s). I mean, why bother?