Beyond routing, static site generation and server-side rendering is what frameworks like Next.js offer. It's important for you, even as a newbie, to understand whether code is being executed on the server or in the browser. This is something new to you as a front-end developer. Ultimately it gives you more power. Now server side development and client side development share the same paradigm: React. You won't be as dependent on a backend developer.

As a self-taught developer, you will encounter concepts that you will struggle to understand. You can put them off, especially if you think you might be able to understand them once you have more context, but don't ignore them. Eventually you will need to understand them in order to progress.