Eight years flying the Airbus and never left normal law.
Real people on board = leave the automatics in and maximise situational awareness. Manual flight immediately raises flight deck workload.
If you passed the IR/last sim then you clearly have at least basic instrument skills.
Practise your instrument flying skills in the sim every 6 months - without real people on board!
In short, life's too short for manual flight in the commercial arena. As a pax, knowing what you know, with your wife and kids on board, would you prefer the automatics/flight director to be on or off?
Sorry, this is the type of attitude that results in a split-S into the ocean at night after a major instrument failure. Zero hand flying skills, zero decison making without the A/P involved, zero chance of functioning in a tough situation like flying and emergency descent with smoke in the cockpit with a standby "peanut" gyro. I'd want the pilots skilled in all A/P modes as well as all abnormal flight modes including hand flying. A pilot with your standard of autopilot all the time and hand flying only in the Sim twice a year is worthless as a well rounded airman. Where is your idea of a "Auto Pilot" Captain going to be if a large goose shatters the radome, and takes out the AOA vanes and most of the pitot tubes? Good luck.