Design/dev-wise, I have totally managed to fall off my learn-to-code bandwagon. I think I'm having a problem where I'm sort of at an intermediate stage where a lot of the simple exercises that learn-to-code books/sites present bore me because they're too easy, but I'm still not ready to dive in DW's codebase because huge and very mature ... . And I can't come up with a good intermediate project to do, which is what I need to learn.

There should be plenty of intermediate DW-related projects you can work on -- if "finding the code to change" is the problem, you can always poke me and I will point you in the right direction.