I started with traditional because you see it a lot in China towns in the US (all established pre-1940s), but I am finding myself learning simplified because it's too dang hard to find resources in traditional without the help of a native because they use bopomofo instead of hanyu pinyin.

I agree with dcseain. I really struggle with reading/writing simplified because even though traditional has a lot more strokes, they seem to follow more consistent patterns. It seems like whenever I see a radical with a bunch of strokes in traditional I find it replaced with wavy/twisty strokes in simplified that don't follow the stroke order/pattern I would expect, and my brain struggles to remember the pattern.

Traditional also really helps for a newbie because they keep the radicals consistent (e.g. you'll find 言 in both simplified and traditional, but when part of a compound character it will change for simplified 说 verus 說). So when you're struggling to remember all these characters meanings, I find traditional kind of helps you out because you can sometimes figure it out from the combination of other radicals you already know.

All of this stated, I'm sure once I have a solid grasp of writing traditional, I will wish it didn't take so dang long to write things and be thankful there is another quicker system.