Your comfort with various traffic maneuvers will evolve with time. Do what feels comfortable and wait. I used to ride on the sidewalk because if felt safer. Now I ride on the street because it feels safer. I'm sure either way is as safe, or not safe, now as it was then, independent of my feelings about it.
On busy streets, I used to make left turns just like cars, but now at one particular street I have started doing sort of what you do. I stay on the right edge of the street and go across the cross street. Then I stop and turn the bike to the left, and cross the street perpendicularly, thus making an effective left turn. The reason I do this is that sevaral times, when I was out in the middle of the street with my left arm out waiting for an opening in the oncoming traffic so I could turn left, people would just stop. I suppose they were trying to be polite, or they thought I had the right of way, or something, but it meant that the well-defined traffic rules are suddenly up for negotiation and we have to sit there saying, no after you, no reallly, you go first, please. One time a police officer actually stopped and asked me what I was doing out there in the middle of the intersection, stopped, with my left arm extended. Now I just try to avoid left turns.