Been a vim user for decades but never used hjkl. Probably strongly correlated with the fact I'm non QWERTY as well (Dvorak). I just use the arrow keys combined with the jumps to start/end of lines/words or to characters.
You don't need to remap anything aside from hjkl as the keybindings are mostly mnemonic and not location based.
On Dvorak at least, ^C is so easy to press that it's great for switching modes, I never use Esc.
I find the more time you've spent in non-graphical shells, especially on low spec devices or laggy connections, the more you appreciate vim. Instead of pressing Del a bunch of times and having it overrun you can ct" to swap out that string. I even use vim keys in vscode, as my hands are so used to them.
My biggest complaint is logging into some legacy device that only has vi and not vim, when shortcuts like "dap" or "caw" don't work
