Can I improve my chess? Or am I too old? I am 25 years old. I have been interested in playing chess since my school days but I never played seriously. One year back I realized that I want to become good chess player and I started. Most of the time I play online games on chess.com. I am a very poorly rated player, about 1100 on chess.com. I have two concerns here.

Am I too old to start chess? I have been playing for almost 1 year but I didn't find much difference in my chess rating. How many days will it take for me to become a good player like 1800+?
Whenever I lose my game, I lose my confidence and I am very afraid to play the next game. I sometimes feel bad after a loss, especially if I lose against a lesser rated player than me. Does anyone else get this feeling?
There is never too late to learn anything (chess, phd, new job, skateboarding). Also you have really small chances of being new superGM :-).


Analyse, not just play. Each game you lost you should review and try to understand why exactly have you lost. Your analysis should depend on your chess level.
Learn standard openings (first starting moves and be sure that you know how to reply to them as well as easy traps to avoid and exploit). No need to go too deep (trying to memorize 15 moves if you are on 1100 level), start with 5 moves and try to understand the reason with them. While doing this look how to reply to standard opening that people use against you.
Solve puzzles
Learn standard endgames like mating with Q or R, to be able to win in easy situations


And do not be scared (you aren't in a boxing match where you can have some problems if you lost). All you are losing are the imaginary points on the imaginary server to an imaginary guy whom you most probably will never see again. There are things in life more scary than that.