I'm in a weird position where I like JavaScript and Node but dislike frontend (or at least I am disliking it more and more).

With Node, I can get quite far with just a couple of dependencies that install quickly. I don't need transpilation unless I want to use TypeScript or PureScript and I can target any version I want. I find it very fun to mess around with Node and a bunch of little modules.

I am slowly "transferring" back to server-rended pages using Node or Elixir. Probably not good for my employment (even in NYC most JS jobs are frontend), but whatever.

If I was learning JS right now and didn't care about employment I'd just learn Node (which just means learning JS really) and experiment with stuff.