DMR on AnyTone 878 HT

So I haven’t had much to say about ham radio in a long while. It’s hard to find time to either do ham radio or talk about it when I do with the schedule I’ve had as an OTR trucker for the last few years. For the last several months, I’ve been working a regional route in Illinois which has given me more time lately to play radio again. Most recently I’ve purchased an AT-D878uvPlus HT from BridgeCom and am slowly learning the ins and outs of DMR radio. My plan is to get an Open Spot 3 asap so that I can operate on all modes with just the one radio. All I’ve really done on it so far is program in enough analog repeaters to cover my trips up to 300 miles from the home QTH, had one QSO on the 2m calling frequency, and send a couple of APRS digital packets through the closest digital repeater. My biggest concern right now is not to take up space for some talkgroup on a repeater where that is not welcome, so I have to figure out how to access the DMR repeater without automatically going to a talk group. In a year I’m sure this question will seem like a very novice one to me. But hey, it’s how this all works, right? One thing at a time. 73 & Happy New Year. Thank God 2020 is behind us.