Update on me - 16 months since stepping into a pool for the first time

I started swimming about 16 months ago and a lot of you here gave me great advice. Today I was swimming at a public pool and one of the lifeguards told me I was a good swimmer. I said, "Thanks, I just started swimming about a year ago." His reply was, "Oh, you took a break for a while?" Me, "No, as in, I stepped in a pool for the first time over a year ago." He gave me this, "you have to be f*cking with me" look. It was great. Worth every hour I spent in the pool. :) A year ago I gave a bullet-list update that everyone seemed to enjoy, so here's the new bullet-list update. Things I've learned about swimming: -- Total Immersion. A year ago I did TI drills all the time and I got absolutely nothing out of them, so I gave up. I understood the concepts intellectually but I couldn't apply them in the water. I got various private coaches who taught me how to swim the "normal" way, splashing around, relatively flat. It felt horrible but I had no better method. But during my splashing, something magical happened: I developed my own stroke. And as one part of my stroke become automatic, I could transfer my "conscious" brain to focus on another part of my stroke that needed development. I started to notice that if I inserted my hand quietly into the water, I got a much better catch. I started to notice that when I pulled with my body rotated and one shoulder deep into the water, I got more power. Then I looked at what I was doing in the water and thought, "wow, I'm doing TI, but I 'discovered' it through exploration rather than TI drills." - Kicking. Flutter kick was a source of misery and disappointment for me for a long time. Should I kick slowly and effortlessly like in the TI videos, or fast and furious like a racer? I tried slow-kicking for a long time and ended up swimming "uphill" all the time. I have absolutely no fat on me and I sink like a rock without a strong kick. So I started doing 25s and 50s just kicking like mad across the pool, face in the water, no breathing. Man did that build up my lung capacity. :) My stroke today is therefore a hybrid: it has a strong, energy-consuming kick coupled with an efficient TI-like pull. My kick keeps my body nice and streamlined so that my TI-like pull can have maximum effectiveness. - Other swimmers. Man, swimmers are a weird bunch. They are always about 30% creepy old men, 30% creepy old women, 30% otherwise antisocial people, and 10% alpha-male/alpha-female jock/lifeguard/social leader types. I'm a very extroverted guy and I like to socialize, but I'm also blind as a bat without my glasses so I'm left squiting aorund the pool. It's an awkawrd combination. - Where to go from here? I'm still refining my strokes and working on things like dives and flip turns, but now that I can actually swim, I want to do something more than just lessons and public swims. I'm interested in self improvement more than "racing" and I'd like some people to share that with. I don't want to swim lap after lap until I'm bored to death. I'm also vaguely interested in pursuing some kind of lifeguard/lifesaving certification, although as far as I can tell, everyone does this when they're like 10 years old and if you missed the boat (the boat?? get it?? because it's lifeguard training???), you don't get a second chance. My personality type is that of lifelong teacher/student moreso than competitor. I'm trying to figure out how those roles fit best into my new-found passion for swimming.