It’s normal you are struggling, you need quite a bunch of modeling knowledge to get around connecting parts into one sold mesh. That’s where all the modeling rules come to be applied. In other words, you need a lot of practice still, 3D modeling is not easy. So don’t feel like you need to know how to do it flawlessly at this point. In your case with the lamp, crashing the meshes into each other is no big deal, since they join at ends on the lamp where it’s barely noticeable.
The challenge is always to know the exact loop count you need to define al the main shapes. A lot of times you have too much or too little. That is why Martin is saying to apply the SubD, because you’ll have too much geometry and the mesh becomes uncontrollable.
So go ahead and practice, do it wrong and fail, it;s essential to fail, because your brain learns what not to do. You keep trying and make your brain start to get how to go about modeling, because it’s one of those skills that you need to re-wire your brain so it becomes natural to you.
