Little Help??

Ok, here goes. New here, so hello everyone. Not very new to swimming, though I feel like I am today. I swam from 5 & unders through high school. Then I ignored my body for 20 years, drank lots of bad things (not in a dangerous way), ate lots of bad things, exercised maybe 10 times per year, yes "year", got married, got lazy, blah blah...you've heard this before. Now have two small children and suddenly realized that I'd love to see them grow up, so I made up my mind to get back in shape. Swimming was always my first love exercise/wise...sooo. Flash forward to November, 2007. 18 months or so ago, give or take. Started with 1000 yards, just swam them, no sets, no breaks, just wind and grind. Moved on to a mile. Still swimming the whole way, no breaks, but determined to get that mile under 30 mins. Did that by April or so of last year. Didn't really know what to try next so I just started adding laps. Pushed on to 2000, 2500, then 3k, STILL just grinding them out. There's nothing cerebral about this swimming stuff, right? You either swim or you don't. So I thought... Oh, I got pretty fast too, not "you guys" fast, but fast at my pool, beating (silently competing with every human that entered the pool, is that normal?) all but a very small few of the other swimmers. Then stupidly, I started reading about swimming. Uh oh...appears I'm using the wrong approach. But I'd alreayd put on so much lean muscle, lost sooooooo much fat, dropped 37 lbs, lost my man-boobs that were oh so attractive to the ladies.... How could this be the wrong way to do it? Enter sets: Fall, 2008. Ahhh, sets. (4) 500's on 9 minutes with about 2 minutes rest, followed by (5) 100's on 1.5 mins, and (10) 50's on a minute. It didn't start off that way, but nearly and now that's pretty much my routine. Yes, I know I should be swimming other strokes, I'm not. *** stroke was always my best, but I'm vanity-swimming now, and I have no time for that. So that's my routine... Enter mechanics: Uh oh...appears that I've been swimming the wrong way now...all this time. Darn You Tube and the TI stuff! So I read Total Immersion. Ugh. I'm the worst swimmer of all time apparantly. Alright, so now I'm working on my mechanics. I'm waiting to start my stroke as my recovery arm is just about to enter the water. I'm keeping a high elbow catch. I'm "skulling" from side to side and stretching my lead arm as best as I can (keeping the vessel long). I'm also about to drown! Granted, I'm really new to this (3 sessions of trying it out), but my times are awful, and I'm winded as can be using this stuff. I think I'm kicking my fanny off trying to keep this up and those old big leg muscles are zapping my O2 supply. Now, my first couple of laps in the 500 are nice and smooth, but I break down into some kind of wounded dog paddle after that. Questions: 1) Is any of this normal, or are y'all so seasoned and good at this stuff that you're past being able to answer these elementary questions?? I'm not being smart here, I picture you guys sitting there in your dens with your lycra caps on thinking "what's he talking about?? Can't he swim at all?" 2) Will it get better? Should I just give it up and go back to my old style? I've added a smooth 15 seconds to my 100 time!!! Uh, that's not congruent with my vanity-swim. I got grandmothers lapping me in the 100!! 3) Am I doing something wrong and do I need to do some kind of funky front-quadrant drill to make this go easier? Like I said, I can feel it sometimes. But this feeling is brief. So I just feel like I've given up a lot to pursue this stroke and I'm worried that I've lost my speed (what speed there was) and will never get it back. If someone will tell me to stick with it, I will. But at this point, I'm on the edge of pursuing a different route - like pilates or spinning... Blue