Hi there, and I'm SO HAPPY for you! You will not regret learning CW. It's been my best friend for 48 years, mostly at the QRP power level.
I've used CW 99% of my 48 years as a ham, and lately love little more than to encourage others to learn it. I've posted quite a bit of hints, lessons, tips, etc on my YouTube channel if you'ld care to watch. I've talked about character speed vs overall sentence speed, missing characters, etc etc.
Dear ham-
After 48 years using CW 99% of the time, let me be honest with you, and don't let anyone convince you otherwise:
20 WPM, for me, is the perfect speed to copy. Yes, I can copy faster. 35 is pushing it for me, but if the conversation is pretty typical, I'll get most of it. And yet-
At the age of 63, SENDING at 20 WPM is about my limit. And it's not about forming the characters with my Iambic paddles and keyer- it's that I'm hard pressed to think that fast. And I've always been this way. Yep, I can copy 35. But my sending? Let's talk about that:
In normal CW conversation, you don't send like a machine. Nobody does. If they did, I'd get bored and go away. What do you do? You take thinking gaps and breaks.. you send the repeated hyphen - - - as many as you need to catch up mentally - - - and you rely on the good old AS sent together. I've done youtube videos on the AS. lol. That's an A run into the S, and it means you're thinking. Send as many as you need. The op on the other end likes it. You'll sound human and interesting.
Moral of my babble: Nobody sends like a machine at 20 WPM. I bet if I'm in a rag chew at 25, my overall speed for any given sentence is 15.
Here's a sample of what I've posted to YouTube. My channel is NOT monetized and rarely do I use outtro music which results in ad placement. I'm in it to share the fun:
First CW QSO - part 1 of 4 - Abbreviations You'll Use + Tips
https://youtu.be/507p5-8IELQTake care and..
GL OM - - - CUL es TU de N8NK dit dit
(Chuck)