I was in this same situation for a long time and when meteor 1.0 came out I went through several tutorials, including discovermeteor, bulletproof meteor. Its like a wave of ok, now I can build stuff and its dynamic, I had a plan to learn socket.io and now it just works. I have also signed up for the free mongodb class jan-Feb so that I don't make a big mistake at some point and dump my database. I also used erlang zotonic for a while but meteor has a bunch more kool-aid that makes it easier when you get stuck or have a question. Oh man, good luck I have been in that situation and can really feel your pain.