I tend to agree with Kurt. I am a very casual scripter, and have tried to learn something new in Perl with each script (although that is not always the case). Thus, for me, it's been on an as needed basis. Have I been able to accomplish the tasks I've tried to with some rudimentary scripts that could be much more elegant? Absolutely. Then again, our kids could get us to feed them with their limited vocabulary at a young age (our oldest's first phrase was "Pass the ketchup").

Having said that, it's like a lot of things. If you want to be an expert, it will take time and practice. GrandFather has some nice suggestions, as do the others in this node. Find some problems you want to work on, and then poke around in Perl to find ways to solve them. Programming Perl, Learning Perl, the Perl Cookbook, this site, CPAN, etc., are all your friends. (You knew that.) If your vocation, computer resources, or self drive (or whatever) determine how you do it (tighter code due to limited memory, parsing through millions of records, whatever), all the better.

It's a great journey, and I hope you have a lot of fun on it!