pacnw

7-11am and then again 8pm-12am.

So if Elemental is a competitor to Bootstrap, would you be able to point out some reasons to use this rather than React Bootstrap? It appears the elements are almost identical to Bootstrap, but with far less number of them so far.

Semantic UI is a competitor as well, but that library has a number of styling options and UI features that Bootstrap does not have. Semantic doesn't seem to have a complete port to React yet, particularly with some of the more advanced controls (sidebar, sticky elements, certain modals, etc.)

The answer is in your wording: 'I have a great and interesting job. I am generally successful'.

That sounds like a pretty good going, so why change it by needing to be great? It's not your fault that you don't care enough, it is your current circumstance.

Often, greatness comes out of intense desire to change one's situation, more as a byproduct.

You could try to simulate that intense desire by imagining dire situations, such as losing your job next week, or as buddhists do, intensely visualize pain, suffering and death to help others (Tibetan buddhism).

I would suggest looking at the number of ready templates (e.g. themeforest etc) that you can use as an initial setup while coding the business logic/back end. There is still coding involved, but it's more like taking blocks and assembling your product, rather than having to start from scratch with all the css etc. Many of these are Bootstrap based, but there are Wordpress templates as well if you prefer. Not affiliated with any of these template sites, but have used this approach myself as I'm a one-man shop at the moment.

The obvious ones: The Lean Startup - Eric Ries, Rework - Jason Fried & DHH, Getting Real - Jason Fried

Very interesting, as I am in a similar situation as you (but I quit my job to do it). All I can say for encouragement based on my day to day experience is: don't listen too much to your mental chatter based on emotions on a day to day basis. I find days when I get very disappointed in the pace of the progress, the look of the design, UI/UX etc, and other days when it really looks like it's coming together. Also, a lot of the landing pages/blogs about the front-end dev tools (e.g. Meteor, React, Ember, Angular etc) make it seem that an app can be thrown together in a weekend, but I have found that is definitely not the case (btw I am using React, Flux, Node stack). Best of luck to you!

Anything by Phillip K. Dick. Start with the Valis Trilogy.