I've hit a wall - please help

So I’m now about 3 weeks in to my ComyUi experience.. and I love it.. but I feel like I’ve hit a wall.

• struggling to find workflows that work
• downloaded tons of safetensors, loras, checkpoints that has gobbled up my disk space!
• created 2 min long stitched together videos that look great but the characters at the start of the video look entirely different by the end of the video

now I’ve discovered that some basics are missing from my build ie: ComfyUI manager and found that none of the essentials (from the essentials button) are enabled. I hit install but they don’t enable. In fact, comyi manager status states it is installed and the directory exists in the custom_nodes folder but there is no button anywhere to launch it…

• I tried installing other essential… goes through the download, get the ‘installed’ message… but not installed
• tried re-installing comfyUI… no change

Not sure how to proceed so any advice (in simple beginner language (remember when you first started!!)) would be most welcome