I have found the Blogger platform pretty straight-forward and easy to use. Here are some of the tools that I utilize. Feel free to poke around and see what works for you.
Posts
Click on "New Post" to compose a new post. There are two formats available. "Compose" comes up as the default which offers you lots of options in regards to font styles, sizes, colors. From here you can also link text, include a picture or video, or format your text with centering, numbering or bullet points. The quotation marks icon allows you to indent a block of text as a quote, if you like. "Edit HTML" is most useful if you have some code you need to paste into your post. You can just type there, but you'll need to know HTML to format the post in any way... and it's just easier to use "Compose." You can publish your post immediately, save it as a draft, or set it to post at a later date and time.
Click on "Edit Posts" to see a list of all your posts. By default it will show "All," including those already posted as well those scheduled, and drafts. If you just want to see
Pages
Click on "New Page" to set up stand-alone pages to be linked in tabs across the top (or on your sidebar, if you'd rather). These are formatted in the same way blog posts are, or you can put in a URL to have that tab re-direct to another site. (For example, your Sonlight page.) You are allowed up to 20 pages.
To make tabs across the top of your blog, select "Top tabs" from the "Show pages as" option. You can rearrange the tabs into any order you like by clicking on "Layout" then "Edit" on the "Pages" placeholder.
Comments
This is pretty straight-forward. It just shows you comments left by others on your posts, and also comments that were caught by the spam filter.
Stats
Allows you to track your traffic for the past day/week/month/all time. I wouldn't take the numbers and info too seriously. For example, I seriously doubt I have readers from as many countries as it says I do. I expect some of them are "bots" or automated hits. However, in networking, sometimes it's handy to know what your numbers are.
On the "Overview" page I have it set to not track my own pageviews.
Earnings
I don't know much about this option because I have chosen to not have ads on my blog. If this is something you'd be interested in, you could certainly look into it.
Layout
You can tweak your layout here, by clicking "Edit" on any of the placeholders.
Template
Lots of fun options here. You can choose different layouts, backgrounds, colors, and fonts under "Template Designer." Usually it's not necessary to do anything under "Edit HTML."
Settings Tab
There's a lot you can play with here. I won't go over everything, but I did want to point out a few settings I find helpful.
Under "Posts and Comments" I allow "Anyone" and leave Comment Moderation off. If you end up having problems with spam comments you may need to change this, but I have found that people are more likely to leave a comment if it's easy for them to do so. If they have to jump through a lot of hoops such as signing in or typing a word verification code they may not want to bother. I also put in my email address in the field for Comment Notification Email. Blogger then emails me whenever anyone leaves a comment.
Under "Site Feed" I allow full blog feeds. I use Google Reader for reading blogs and I don't usually bother to click through on posts when only the first couple sentences show up in the reader. I figure most people won't, so I allow my full posts to show up.