You weren’t wasting your time at all 
It’s all part of the journey.
It’ll help to consider the Daisy Pod as a Daisy Seed that already comes with common components, such as LEDs and knobs. So the tutorials that we have posting (and will be posting) will apply to Pod, Patch, and etc. So for example, when we start the audio tutorial series next, you may feel like it’s targeted for Daisy Seed only, but you can follow it just fine with Pod. The main difference is that you can skip the part about connecting an audio jack (it’s already there for Pod!).
And when we get to the hardware configuration series, same thing. This time, you’ll just skip the part about connecting a potentiometer. And technically, you can skip the JSON file part but you can write it from scratch for Pod (you just need to know which pin it is connected to. You of course can ask in the comment about it).
What I personally recommend for you is to take a break from Daisy and focus on learning MaxMSP and gen~ which seems like the language that you’re committing to. And once you’re comfortable, start patching a custom synth. And then, you’re ready to revisit Daisy by flashing that patch! You can use the pod template to figure out how to map the hardware to the synth parameters in your patch. You’re more than welcome to ask questions about it.
Best of luck!