My 2 cents: Swing is a big animal, but it gets easier if you get a deeper understanding of it. I found Swing much easier to use once I pushed myself through a complete Swing reference (I think it was the Manning Swing book, but I'd have to find it to see). You may want to just touch on the basics of Swing for now, but put a more in depth look somewhere down your priority list.
And three things that have saved me
alot of headache on swing are Foxtrot, Swing Worker, and JGoodies Forms.