Am I making progress [WILD]?

That sounds like progress to me. The experience is a little different for everyone, so you won’t know what it is like for you until you WILD successfully. As Rhewin said, trying WILD after being asleep for a few hours makes it much easier.

As for other methods: https://community.ld4all.com/t/all-ld-techniques/24932. That also includes some variations of WILD that may help you out.