I had a very similar experience; thought it was an interesting language but I got discouraged around the time the small stuff I was working on required lifetimes, or had weird reference errors (or at least, what I thought was weird at the time).
When I tried again recently I started with the Too Many Linked Lists, which I felt did a better job of explaining both lifetimes and how the compiler views <type>, &<type>, and &ref <type> as completely different types, and that helped a ton.
Combine that with spending more time understanding how Rust handles object composition (compared to "traditional" OOP), the massive compiler improvements W/R/T lifetime elision and auto-derefing within the past several years, and realizing just how damn helpful the compiler and documentation is compared to other languages (again, thanks to TMLL for explicitly showing this), and it's been a downright pleasure to use this time around.
When I tried again recently I started with the Too Many Linked Lists, which I felt did a better job of explaining both lifetimes and how the compiler views <type>, &<type>, and &ref <type> as completely different types, and that helped a ton.
Combine that with spending more time understanding how Rust handles object composition (compared to "traditional" OOP), the massive compiler improvements W/R/T lifetime elision and auto-derefing within the past several years, and realizing just how damn helpful the compiler and documentation is compared to other languages (again, thanks to TMLL for explicitly showing this), and it's been a downright pleasure to use this time around.