Had a similar experience, tried to switch to Meow twice, it's really nice in most ways. But I found lack of vim-style repeat and accidental "dropping" the selection to be so unwieldy that I couldn't stick to using it.

Ended up writing an alternative to Meow which addresses the issues I had.

It's currently in review for Melpa, see:

- https://codeberg.org/ideasman42/emacs-meep

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJqX8Z64k0c