There's a maxim ... and it's a good, true maxim ...

So you're entirely correct when you say, “it's always easier for me to read my code ...” but what would everybody-else say? Of course. So, the true bottom line needs to be ... if you're doing something that's already been done, you're truly wasting your own time and for no defensible reason.

CPAN has a certain amount of “broken, smelly crap” of course, but quite often that's just your first impression, and that impression usually fades quickly. The truth is, most of the stuff that you set out to write, as though you were the first human on the planet to have done so, isn't “original” at all. There is no shame in changing your approach to a project into:   “my task is to discover and then select an appropriate solution for this problem.”

What is particularly interesting and useful, if you will allow yourself to be receptive to it, is the very different and sometimes-unique points of view that a particular CPAN-author will bring to what he or she has contributed. There's sometimes a very-surprising depth of experience just sitting right there, waiting for you only to pick it up and take advantage of it. The more you do that, the more you prefer doing that.