if you feel like you're falling behind, keep a journal so you can see the rate of your progress. You might find that you're actually accomplishing more than you think. Also with hard surface stuff like this, the last 10% of polish is really important; a darker cyberpunk, neon-lit alleyway could be a better composition fit…
I'd suggest to avoid flat surface vertices as much as possible, the only "rule" that would allow to let a little vertex in the middle of a flat surface would be "avoid tiny-long triangles", else, there's no need to put vertices in the middle of a flat surface
Kinda both, I want to do this project because my portfolio lacks hard surface stuff. So, I want to complete a hard surface project that shows my competence in modeling hard-surface objects to any potential employers. Also, it's my friends Glock that I'm modeling, so, yeah.