Wondering what to do, honestly...

[Equitable_Remedy]

So, I finally jumped back into the game a few days ago, and... looking at the community

Let me stop you right there. This isn't "the community." The forums/twitch/discord are small, self-selecting groups of players and not in any way representative of the community. You'll find the community in the game having fun.

With the current job balance being the way it is, I'm at a lost on what to actually do right now

and I feel like it would be a decent idea to grab a higher DPS job

Of course, play how you want to play, but trying to chase the FOTM is not generally a good path for enjoying an MMO (or any online game, really). Balance patches will change things over time. Also, the forums/twitch/discord wildly distort balance issues - you've already missed week-one clears, so any job is fine.

So, how are you guys doing?

Doing great. I've mained NIN since I started playing FF14 during ShB, and it's still the class I have the most fun playing - that wouldn't change if another class started doing 1% more damage at the 95th percentile.