frontend is fine, you're probably just shoving a framework where you don't need one because the vast vast plurality of frontend education has taught you the tools and techniques for building enterprise-scale apps that grind your browser to a halt, because that's what capital wants to produce. there's quite a hole in the "diy blog website" level of education, and i'd love to see more resources teaching practical webdev skills for the hobby project level.
but, in the meantime, the best advice i can give is to strip it down to the basics. figure out what you want to build, and only bring in what you need to build it. it doesn't have to be hard. but the tech industry can keep creating busywork for itself if they tell you it is. just ignore react, ignore tailwind, ignore vite, ignore everything until you need it.
