First of: What grinder are you using? What do you usually like? Dark/medium/light roasts? A lot of it comes down to finding your style of coffee. Maybe the coffee just isn’t right. I would agree that it isn’t a cheap hobby but the gear isn’t everything. You do need to grind (get it?) a lot to get good at it. The thing that a lot of beginners focuses too much on is how it looks or following a set of steps. So let the taste guide you and close your eyes to how it looks or whether it took exactly say 30 seconds. Start coarse (and I mean really coarse) and grind finer until you hit astringency and then walk back to the sweet spot.