Welcome to FlyerTalk. I am veryy sorry to hear about your cancer and wish you the best. You don't have to look for one mentor; here at FT we are all mentors and mentees to one another. We share and we learn; that's why we are here.

OK, a few suggestions:

1. Select a favorite program to concentrate on. That could be an airline that you fly most often and would like to accumulate miles for award tickets. Or it could be Starwood hotel points that could be transferred into miles for quite a few different airline programs. I see that you mentioned Delta car rental. Are you focusing on the Delta Skymiles program?

2. If you pay off your credit card bills every month, then you can select one or a few credit cards that you use to achieve/maximize your miles.

3. The most fun comes from executing a successful Mileage Run. Since you do fly around to conferences and retreats, you can quite easily combine your travel with a mileage run. You can visit the MR forum to get ideas. Also, you can post your destination with a question, and you will find plenty of helpful responses.