Just completed my first (and only) "blindfolded" game. Help!

I played very very few times when I was little. However, like many, after seeing Queen's Gambit (in December) I started playing a lot. I'm a math + computer science graduate and like playing games which are simple in premise but ultimately super complex in strategy with as little luck involved as possible. So chess has kind of been a perfect "discovery" for me.

I've watched Levy and others talk about openings and read a very simple book which sets up the general principles, as well as done puzzles, and watched Hikaru and the lessons he gives for pogchamps quite a bit.

Anyway, I read multiple places that learning to visualize the board is crucial to improving one's ability to think ahead. So I've done several things to try to help with that. Anyway, I figured "why not throw myself into the deep end and try to go as far into a game as possible without looking at the board?" My dad agreed to help (decent at chess, played in a chess club in school at a school that won national titles just before he was there).

Well, we just finished. We made probably about 30 moves each before he checkmated me. I would frequently said things like "I have pawns on a1, b3, c2, and e5, right?" and was only wrong one time. I never really mounted any reasonable attack, but without time limits the game ended up taking about 90-100 minutes and he said it wasn't easy to find a mate– though he never really felt I threatened him. 

I need some help/opinions, though... on my first try, I made it through a 60-total move game of blindfolded chess, only hanging one important piece when I forgot about one of his knights. And I kept track of the pieces through the entire game. HOWEVER, I can never really say I had a "picture" of the board in my head and had little to no visualization of where pieces could move on the board. I just knew where they were by coordinates in my head, and had to constantly say things to myself like: "My Queen is on e3. Can I put his King on g7 in check if I move to... d4? Well, that would mean I threaten e5, f6, g7, so yes, I could."

So, while I played the game "blindfolded" I only vaguely remembered that certain pieces had been moved to certain spaces by name, rather than by truly "seeing" it on the board in my head. I do have a good memory for lists and such, though nothing extraordinary. And I didn't see a list of moves in my head either.

Did this do any good for me as far as visualization? I feel very proud that I played such a "long" game without losing track of the pieces, but don't feel I necessarily learned anything about visualization. I still think I overestimate the horizontal distance covered by the c through f files especially and always have to talk through movements rather than "see" the possible movements.

I do want to get better and especially improve my visualization, but would love to know what more experienced players think. As I said, I don't FEEL like I had a picture in my head, though I could kinda recreate groups of squares at certain times and could list of the coordinates of every piece one-by-one in my head. But it wouldn't stick, and I'd have to keep "recreating" the info in my head. Any suggestions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Maybe I am on the right track and my expectations are just tainted by Beth's depiction of visualizing pieces on the ceiling... lol. Again, help/suggestions appreciated.

EDIT- I've only played Blitz games on here so far. I assume I need to play longer games?

You can set many computer programs (probably the one here too) to play blind if your dad gets tired of it.   Keep practicing and you will get better at it.   I have no memory; I have tried it and do nowhere near as well as you did on your first one.   So you have found something you can probably excel at and it will help your game, if you did that well on the first.   I am also cs/math,   I think chess attracts computer people for sure, it used to be the challenge of better engines or just making an engine, but thats become sort of a solved problem.