Making games IS hard. It's a somewhat Herculean task requiring discipline, effort and organization. If you just follow whims, see-sawing back and forth between languages and platforms then you will never get anything done. At some point you have to stop trying to get other people to do the thinking for you and tell you what to do, and start thinking logically about the problem in front of you. Todo lists, goal setting, time scheduling... all of the things that self-help books advise you to do when trying to make changes to your life are exactly what you need to start doing. And effort. Real effort, not just tinkering around. You're not going to be able to just read the right tutorial and have it suddenly gel in your mind in some kind of Eureka! moment; that just won't happen.

On a side note, watch out for depression. If you feel like depression is holding you back, you might want to seek help. There are a lot of causes for depression, and it's easy to underestimate just how life-devouring it can be, but a lot of those causes can be treated. Diet and exercise help me to keep mine under control, and I notice SIGNIFICANT differences in my ability to be productive when I am eating better and exercising. Some causes might require medication depending on the diagnosis. But it is definitely something you want to be aware of.

As Dr. John Dorian said:

Learn by doing, Learn by doing!

Every once in a while I will get into a programming language and I will work with it for a few days or like a couple weeks or such. I just can't ever get the hang of it.

You can't expect to "get the hang of" a computer language in a few days or weeks. To really become proficient at programming takes a long time. There are no short cuts. Don't get frustrated because you haven't mastered it yet (I'm still trying to do that).

As for the depression, sometimes it is caused by major life changes. But sometimes it happens for no reason. People with depression can be tired, unmotivated, and very apathetic. They can start drinking, using drugs, loose their jobs, and destroy relationships. Sometime this does happen because of a series of unfortunate events. If you can't seem to get yourself out of it, then maybe talking to someone is a good idea. But someone with clinical depression has these symptoms for no reason. There isn't anything a person can do to make themselves feel better. It is a terrible place to be, because someone in that place cannot recognize that it is happening.

I will suggest, if you are up to it, to take a look at depression quest. http://www.depressionquest.com/

What I've taken from this is that I have a serious issue and I need to get help.

There is nothing wrong in asking for help. It doesn't matter if it's needing help to solve programming problems, or if it's personal difficulties being too difficult to cope with on your own.

If you really want to learn to program, I would suggest finding 1 language/API/engine, and then comitting to it. Make a small project, but be sure to actually complete it. If you don't know how to complete it, ask for help, stating how far you've come, and what you think the next steps might be, and why those steps are problematic to solve.

For some general hints, be sure to check out the FAQ.

Learning to program (like anything else) will take a lot of time. If you like it, it will definitely be worth it.

Good luck.

I can understand the depression bit. I think I've been there a bit myself. I can't speak for you, but here's what was happening with me:

I'd spend every single day in front of the computer, playing video games or watching youtube videos, and alternating between videos and games when one gets more boring than the other. I do this until I am completely and utterly exhausted, usually some time at around 4am or 5am. If it was summer, the birds would start to chirp before the sun comes up and that would be my cue to go to sleep. I'd do this for a week, and then stop and pause and look at what I'm doing with my life and conclude that it's being wasted. I'm wasting time. And then I'd get disappointed in myself and want to do something better with my life. That's a fleeting feeling though, and soon I'd dive right back into the games and videos. It's all I did. Anybody would eventually get depressed if they just did that and only that (money is irrelevant here). I mean, there's more to life than video games and youtube. You don't want to realize a decade later that your last ten years were a blur, right?! That'd make you feel even more depressed and hopeless. But here's the thing: video games, youtube videos, netflix, etc are just a default habit, it's something you do when you don't want to try to think of something else to do. I mean, you *could* spend 30 minutes figuring out a good project to work on and get into, or you could just fart around on the computer. We human beings tend to take the path of least resistance, we're lazy. If we always take the easy road, we get fat, stupid and complacent in life. If you really want something, you have to work for it. There is no shortcut. Want to get stronger and in shape? Gotta lift weights and eat well! Want to be better at mathematics? Time to crack open a few math books and start doing some practice problems. Want to get great at painting? Break out the paints and start painting. Want to get good at game development? Start making games at your skill level. Want to get good at wood carving? Break out some wood and get carving. You'll suck at first. Everyone does. But don't be a critic on your talents in comparison to others, instead, focus on how awesome this thing *YOU* did is. YOU figured out how to do it all on your own, and you did it! All on your own. Its rewarding. A big part of the reward in all of this is your own personal discovery. Even today, I'm discovering new things for myself which are probably well known to everyone else but me (example of something I learned today: If you take two line segments of any triangle and draw their perpendicular lines at the midpoints of each segment, the intersection point is the same point as the third segment you didn't draw!). Who cares if other people already knew this or that, or mastered something I'm a novice at. It's new and hard for me! What's funky is this...believe it or not, it's actually more fun to NOT play video games, NOT watch youtube videos, NOT watch netflix or TV, NOT do the default goto behavior/habit, and much more fun to spend time working on your own projects (whatever they are). Yeah, it's hard work. Yeah, it takes effort and exertion. It's just as hard as hiking up a big mountain every day. I can tell you to do it, and tell you about the view from the top, but you have to climb the mountain for yourself if you want to see the view. Nobody can helicopter you to the top. That means putting one foot in front of the other even though your body and mind is telling you that you don't want to. A lot of people dream about seeing the top of the mountain (figuratively) but never take the first step to even try. A lot of people take a few steps, see its hard, and give up. Some people take a bunch of steps and die on the trail trying to get to the top. And some people overcome all of this and reach the summit. Clamp down, fight yourself, find that grit, and steam roll any obstacle that gets in your way with hard work and perseverance, every single day. That's the key difference between successful people and failures.

One last thing about making games: Making games is not even close to the same as playing them. Being good at (and enjoying) playing games is pretty irrelevant to making games. This is a common misconception among young college students who pay bucket loads of money to go to a specialized university which will teach them how to make games. They get there, pay a lot of money ... and then it gets really hard, they have a rude awakening on the level of work required, and they don't know to work hard or want to work hard, and then they get disillusioned, give up and drop out. The school is more than happy to take their loan money and let them wash out. Making video games is a subset of software development, not playing games. Become a great, hard working software developer and you'll do fine in either the games industry or the software industry.

I'd do this for a week, and then stop and pause and look at what I'm doing with my life and conclude that it's being wasted. I'm wasting time. And then I'd get disappointed in myself and want to do something better with my life. That's a fleeting feeling though, and soon I'd dive right back into the games and videos. It's all I did. Anybody would eventually get depressed if they just did that and only that (money is irrelevant here).

Off of the OP's topic for one second. How do you make money to survive by playing games and watching youtube? That doesn't sound bad to me. Sounds like heaven.