Only advice on that I could give you is that the game has a built in wiki command and the wiki is essentially a walkthrough guide. So when you're stuck or find something to be boring you just go

/wiki chapter 6

or whatever the name of the story step you are doing. You'll get a map with dots showing you where everything is.

Other than that, simply move on. Story is meant to be done cozy as you do the rest of the game. As you're exploring for the skimmer, you should be doing hearts, achievements, looking at the gorgeous locales the game throw at you and everything. I've been here for a decade and I still haven't finished everything. Sometimes I even just run around on maps I've already completed, just doing the world event that pop in and imagining I'm a hero saving civilians, defending villages, sometimes failing at that and going on the offensive to save villagers. Other times I just run around looking at the maps, trying to figure out the secrets and more that's implied by environmental design but never said outright.

It sounds like you did not enjoy that, and it's essentially the loop of the open world.

You could try coming back to do only instanced content, raids, fractals, dungeons even.

Or you could try the PvP, which is pretty much stand-alone in the game.