Chess improvement after 1 year

Recall you finishing your 1st year of chess (if you have), how much improvement did you make? Were you a serious or hobby player? What resources did you use to improve your game? Why did you continue to play the game of chess? If you're a serious chess player, did you ever consider giving up?

I started playing last year in April, and I was playing at around the 1200-1300 level when I quit in August.  I didn't touch the game again, because I had no time for it, until this month and I seem to be playing at around the 1100 level..  So I have no idea how decent that is, but I hope to be playing at a 1400 level by December.

In my first OTB the season I played 37 games. (2004/2005)

In the first 16 games my record was 7 wins, 7 losses and 2 draws.

Against a similar standard of opposition in the 2nd half my record was 12 wins, 5 losses and 4 draws.

So yeah, I improved quite a bit.

A quick glance at the openings show I moved from 1. e4 and 1...e5 to moves like 1. Nf3 and 1...g6 which seem to be more in my style (this has since progressed to 1. c4 as white, with the sicilian, KID and 1..g6 2...Bg7 as my openings today).

The major factor though was probably just improving thanks to playing a better standard of chess than I played online.  IOW, Experience.

I went from not knowing how the pieces move to about where I am now..

I went from only knowing how pieces move to where I am now in the past 8 months since I joined chess.com.

I don't know how things will be in a year from now, but after two months, I'm now at 1,591 here on Chess.com, in Turn-Based games. I'm entangled in chess 30-50 hours weekly.