Mike:
Actually I had an extremely experienced consultant who was guiding me throught the process. I had also purchased two different texts on Subversion and worked my way through them to some degree as I was also being guided by my consultant. I do think, however, that "retrofitting" is always a challenge, esp with a large project that has been in multiple deployed versions since LV5.x.
I also believe I have taken responsiblity, at least partly, for what happened to me as I'm clear about my unfamiliarity with Subversion when I started using it and my needing to get "up to speed" with a brand new tool while in the midst of a large refactoring process of a very large and involved project. Were I starting from "ground zero" with a completely NEW project, I'm sure the experience would have been different as well.
It seems to me that at least at times people can have different styles or approaches and that those difference can and should be respected. I don't think it's as simple a matter as having "discipline" or not. If something works then probably there is at least SOME value to it -- otherwise it wouldn't even work. Retaining and extending THAT value in a systematic way is being disciplined. So let's be clear about something that is very important in this discussion. I do HAVE a source control process in place -- it's just not implemented at this time via an "off the shelf" software package like Subversion. And it's worked pretty well for a number of years now despite not being implemented via an off the shelf solution.
Now to be a bit more specific, since I was accessing the repository "off site" via the internet and because of network-related challenges on my end (due partly to my use of three radically different development platforms), the challenge came in coordinating ALL of those resources, esp when the "off site" server was not accessible when needed. Again I want to be clear -- I'm not saying that Subversion is "bad". Given all of the aspects, constraints and demands of my development situation AT THIS TIME it simply didn't support my work flow as that needed to be done.