Padawan learner

I've heard from some and read advice from others that when you start a knitting pattern you should always read the whole pattern to check for mistakes, get an idea what the project entailes (sp?), and see the process. They also say that even more experienced knitters will be able to pick out parts that they know will go quicker other ways, know where to add or take away parts to make the sweater fit the body-being-made-for better, and just do what they want with the pattern as a guide.
Lovely.
Me and my post-it self can't get past a sentence with one instruction. If I read ahead, I chicken out and go back to the never-ending scarf collection (which I think is an interesting way to store yarn until I frog the boring scarf I never wear and finally make something interesting with it. Not that I'm knocking scarves, there just isn't much need for them when it's still 70 degrees F at Christmas sometimes.) But I am also doing a step-by-step process of working through my intermediate/beginner insecurties and am having to rethink the way I look at patterns. Especially with this sweater wrestling match, which I think I have figured out hopefully, officially, and finally. It's interesting that now that I am looking at everything in retrospect and with a little more experience (frogging will do that to you, along with eyeing things and thinking about how many steps will I have to do so to NOT rip out anything more and it still look decent), I am finding myself saying, "Oh, I should have known in the beginning that it wouldn't go like that. It only makes sense that it should be done this way instead." But of course in the beginning I didn't know then what I know now and in the beginning I had the policy of not looking further than the next line, which is still a decent policy probably AFTER reading through the pattern, not letting myself freak out, and getting a good idea of where everything will go when.
Like all padawans, I have much to learn. Like all padawans I also appreciate the patience of the older and wiser knitting Jedi, even when I'm being cocky and whiny and don't want to appreciate anyone who isn't me. It all comes down to realizing the older you get, the less you feel you know, and the more you have to rely on the rules because you'd get lost going to the grocery store without a map. Or maybe it's not exactly like that but that was a point I wanted to throw in here somewhere. Basically it comes down to realizing all over again that those who write the patterns do know what they are doing, I'm just not quite on their path; just taking a short-cut to find their end.