Hopefully this will help you find my mistake--

I was NOT able to find Stores>>Domains through my usual route to update my site: goodsteven.com/wp-admin. I looked here forever.

And then--

I was able to find Store>>Domains, when I logged in as goodstevendotcom.wordpress.com/wp-admin.

Then my attempts to Store>>Domains>>Add Email>> always resulted in
"There was an error configuring your Google Apps email account to link it to goodsteven.com."

So I gave up on this route.

Then I went Store>>Domains>>Edit DNS>> Here I was never able to make any edits to The DNS Stick.

The Google activation code wouldn't effect changes. And I couldn't get the the new MX records to stick.

This is what I wanted to change (Google Apps screen shot from yesterday.)

No luck with any of it.

Then I went Store>>Domains>>(bottom of page, "what would you like to do")>>"make changes to my DNS>>

This led me to Automattic. Here I edited my nameserver with the above MX records (screenshot).

Then my email took hold!

And then everything went to shite because the old goodstevendotcom.wordpress.com became the default (a shell of a website)

and all of the work that went into goodsteven.com . . . well I can't even find it. I can't even log into it as I once was able to. Those log in credentials do not work.

Please help me sort this out... Ideal I could restore what I had. I've spent so much time linking my social media to specific blog posts (links that only arrive at error messages now.).