One possible step here is to step back from work, just look around at other things going on(either software related or other topics in life) and start learning

One possible step here is to step back from work, just look around at other things going on(either software related or other topics in life) and start learning some thing else. For instance, one path look at courses/lecture-notes in pl theory/implentation, or some other aspects of software. Just learn out of curiosity. This might lead to solution of original obstacle, or finding out that there are more interesting problems to work on. This happens frequently, even on success, some other project becomes more important than previous goal.