a few questions on where to go from here.

Here's the issue - your arena shard is based on when you first started, so you are going to have a very hard time getting crystal income from there. Your fleet shard (at least the top end of it) is likely already changing over to the capital ship Negotiator - which, since you haven't been active in a guild, you will also be hard pressed to come by. I would strongly consider "starting over" with a new account. It will be much easier for you to get climb in arena and fleet arena.