Thanks for the advice, this is really helpful & I appreciate you all taking the time & being patient with me. I'm trying to learn how to do this myself so I was hoping to avoid using an award booking service but agreed that it might be the easiest (& maybe best value based on the amount of time I've already spent on this!).
I've one specific question - how do you search award availability on Qatar airways - I keep getting an error message because I don't have any points with them directly & I tried to find availability on Award Nexus but that was a bust too. I was looking at JFK to BKK or SIN on 23rd Nov & I kept getting this. I also tried the reverse flight on Jan 3rd & the same pop-up.
