I probably made it more complicated on myself than was warranted. I was trying to connect my Zeus wallet with Alby, then getting confused about which wallet I was actually using, created unnecessary keypairs, and ran into lots of “non sync” issues.

I switched to Blink (yes, custodial, not a huge fan, but willing to be custodial for small amounts), got my keys sorted, set of Alby extensions properly and linked to Blink, and started adding relays. With a bit of practice seems to be working perfectly.