Apprentices spend years before they’re called masters. Nobody calls that wasted time.

In any trade with a real standard, the long middle stretch counts as the training rather than as a delay before it. Years of doing the work under somebody’s eye is how competence actually gets built, and nobody involved files those years under time lost. The expectation that learning should be quick is far newer than the crafts it gets applied to.

Pick something you are willing to be a beginner at for a long while, then stop measuring it in weeks. Find somebody further along and ask what they were still getting wrong at your stage. Settle into it instead of waiting for it to be over.