Dear KrakenShmraken,
One of the best ways to learn an opening is to study sample games from good players to understand the strategies, pawn structures, concepts of that opening.
I am a certified, full-time chess coach and International Master, so I have seen it and tried it all.
There are so many ways to get better and I know it can be overwhelming.
You can learn from free videos on youtube, there are books at your disposal that can all help, but they are not tailored to your needs.
One of the most important things you can do is to analyze your games! You must learn from your mistakes! That is a priority. You can't really move on to a new, different topic and learn new ideas if you still make the same mistakes over and over again!
This is where a chess coach comes into the picture. A good coach can show you how to study, what to study, gives you the material YOU need. Naturally, it takes time to use everything in practice, but if you are relentless and persistent you will succeed!
You should learn the main principles in every area of the game (opening, middlegame, endgame). Don't focus on only one part! You should improve your tactical vision as well as it is part of all areas!
This how I built my training program for my students. We discuss more than one topic during a lesson so it's always interesting and they can improve constantly. I give homework too and the right tools to make practicing enjoyable and effective!
Don't worry about your rating and the ups and downs! Just keep on playing and practicing!
I hope this helps. I wish you good games and 100+ extra ratings
I've left a short summary of the whole thing in the last para, if you don't want to read the whole thing feel free to skip ahead. so I've been into chess for about a week and I think my progression is OK (started from 350 rapid I think), and I think I do somewhat decent enough during midgames and sometimes even during end games. However, the most perplexing part for me is the opening. I just don't know how to open a chess game. I tried the london system for White and K.I.D for black but it's really not very easy to play with those openings if you don't know what role each piece play in those openings. After castling in KID I always think to myself "what now?" and then get kinda lost.
My point is, I don't have a strong base for openings but I want to make one. So I'd be really glad if someone gave me some easy to understand openings to play with both color of pieces (or maybe even tips on how to NOT get lost after establishing a position, or just valuable tips in general). Anything is appreciated.