I walked almost the same path. For the first couple of months I was customizing the hell out of Emacs. Then the things started falling apart and I've switched

I walked almost the same path. For the first couple of months I was customizing the hell out of Emacs. Then the things started falling apart and I've switched to the 20-line long .emacs and empty .emacs.d (well, almost empty if you don't count key-chord/ace-jump-mode combo which makes file navigation a mindreading experience)