Your Personal Learning Process

[NiCACHiCA]

I have been studying Spanish, somewhat steadily, for the past 6 months. In the beginning, I mainly concentrated on vocabulary and the Present Indicative for verbs. I would say I have a pretty good handle on those, but obviously learning more day by day. My problem is, during a conversation I will come across a verb I'm unsure of how to conjugate or need to use another tense that I don't know yet, so instead of guessing, I automatically start talking in the infinitives for everything. (Only the people that know me WELL understand what I'm trying to say!). Now I'm trying to jump into the Past Tense and Subjunctive, but it just seems like so much to remember, and that's just with the regular verbs. I don't know where to start...So my question is, from the beginning, what was your process of learning it all. Did you do a little of everything (vocab, present tense, past, future, subjunctive, idioms, etc.), or did you learn one thing at a time (and in what order)? Any help I can gleam from your experiences would be GREATLY appreciated!!