I've been playing chess for about a year... i was really into it my first couple of months but by playing about 500 games in the course of maybe 4 months, i got really good. once the allure of chess wore off, i hit a plateau in my improvement and I'm just realizing why. you see, when i started playing ,chess was fun. good game, bad game, blundered game, or perfect game i always enjoyed chess. but, as time went on and i was just playing for the sake of playing, it got really easy for me to get frustrated when i lost or made a blunder. and im just now figuring out that frustration was/is the reason for my plateau. when i made a blunder before, i would smile and smack myself on the head for blundering and see where i went wrong (learning). but since frustration set in, now i just wanna break my chess board in little pieces and use it for firewood. frustration never helps, in chess or anything else in life, and thanks to chess ive realized this. you dont learn from experience by getting frustrated, you learn from experience by milking your experience for everything its worth and getting as much out of it as possible.

Getting better at chess seems to come in steps. You learn the game, reach a certain level and don't improve as quickly at this point. It is at this point that you want to see where you're having trouble and work on it. It usually is a matter of working on tactics, middle games, etc. In short, you want to figure out where you're having problems and address them. I know how you feel. I had people here analyze my games and tell me where I needed improvement so I could get to the next level or plateau.

The only thing experience will teach you is that you suck at chess =/

I agree with Hugh. It seems to come in batches. I know in my case that I will make a jump, then level off or drop a little, then jump again. It seems that the periods where I am level or dropping a little is where I am taking in a bunch of new information. Then when it finally is assimilated I make another jump. 500 games in 4 months is a lot. Perhaps taking it a bit more in moderation will allow you to not burn out which is probably where the frustration is really coming from. Spend more time analyzing the fewer games that you have played and figure out areas where you need to work. Try to play slow games as well as blitz.