For myself, learning how to play Touhou and the frustration that so often comes with it was lessened because I was having a blast doing it. Hours would go by and I didn't realize it more often than not because I was too busy talking about how much I like dodging Futo's second card, or how silly Youmu's stage six midboss attack was in that it had the slowdown effect but didn't actually slow down the card. How you approach the games and what you take out of it for all those hours you put in are completely up to you of course, but the most important thing of all is to want to take something away from your time spent. If you feel like you're not getting anything out of your practice and that the only thing that matters is the goal, especially when you first start playing could be a big wall in front of your improvement. Anyone who can get around that mindset could easily improve and "get good".
Then again, my experience is limited to about a year of STGs.
