I'm curious what you mean by the payoff being a ways away. Do you feel you don't understand some aspect of Rust well enough to write anything in it?
As a tangent to that and your original question what languages do you already know? Understanding where your knowledge is lacking could help provide better answers as what languages someone enjoys learning/using tends to change a lot as they become more experienced and start to develop an appreciation for the more complicated problems more involved languages help solve.