C is more than enough to getting work done, but you need to look beyond to expand your mind and play with higher-levels of computing than pointer manipulation and bit flipping.

I haven't thought about pointer manipulation or bit flipping for years. Once you know a language you stop thinking about the grammar.

It's not the grammar that's in your face, ime, it's the minimal semantics. In C I'm more conscious of low-level details that I don't need to think about: planning where to put things, stack, heap, static area or even, gasp, registers is not a good way to implement higher level data structures and algorithms.

I prefer to focus on lists, graphs, queues, objects, events, continuations/control-semantics, and communication messages. I prefer to code in a high-level languages that allows me to get lower and lower as my needs for performance arise, and C is not it; in C I would need to build up my language to the higher semantic level my applications usually require, before I can even see it work. It puts the performance cart before the usefulness horse.