If you are really interested in chess then there are certainly ways to improve. All of them take work, but you don't have to give over your whole life. A little every day is enough.
I can't recommend http://www.chesstactics.org enough. Tactics are crucial, both for offense and defense. Read this for understanding, not to skim, and do the exercises. Again, do the exercises.
While going through the above, or after you've finished, do tactics on chesstempo.com or another site. You will miss a lot of them in the beginning, but practice makes perfect. It's crucial to your game to be able to just see certain positions jump out at you, and timed exercises will help immensely.
For playing practice, find an online site and be willing to suffer through some losses as your ranking settles in. Maybe you have never won a game, but believe it or not you are not the worst player ever. As your rating is found, you can match up against others on your level. There are several big sites, and a ton of others. I use chess.com.
Another thing to try is "correspondence" chess, where you can play out a game over days, weeks or even months. Why? Because you can play many such games at once, you can play a bit when you have time, you can play people all over the world (no time zone issues), etc. But perhaps the biggest thing is that when you have 6 or 12 games going, you have to be able to look at a board and find the best move essentially from scratch. This ability to look at a board for what it actually is right now (instead of in the context of your plans from 5 moves ago), is a very good skill to have.
On any of my commutes I'd just be doing chess tactics on my phone. After like a year I played some 100~ games. Won like 75 of them because I got really good at predicting moves and recognizing patterns. Seriously just nail out tactics day in and day out.
They are micro puzzles that increase in difficulty and isolate specific parts of the chess game, be it beginning, mid, or end game. Once you do a couple thousand of these, move on to a real board where every piece is in play.
Trust me, you'll get good fast, it just depends how much time you're willing to put in. Also, go to chess clubs. I go every Monday in my city and it's a huge help to get insight from veterans and pros.
Once you start even remotely understanding strategy and moves, you will get so addicted. Just need get over that beginners hump. I'm still shit by the way.
I can't recommend http://www.chesstactics.org enough. Tactics are crucial, both for offense and defense. Read this for understanding, not to skim, and do the exercises. Again, do the exercises.
While going through the above, or after you've finished, do tactics on chesstempo.com or another site. You will miss a lot of them in the beginning, but practice makes perfect. It's crucial to your game to be able to just see certain positions jump out at you, and timed exercises will help immensely.
For playing practice, find an online site and be willing to suffer through some losses as your ranking settles in. Maybe you have never won a game, but believe it or not you are not the worst player ever. As your rating is found, you can match up against others on your level. There are several big sites, and a ton of others. I use chess.com.
Another thing to try is "correspondence" chess, where you can play out a game over days, weeks or even months. Why? Because you can play many such games at once, you can play a bit when you have time, you can play people all over the world (no time zone issues), etc. But perhaps the biggest thing is that when you have 6 or 12 games going, you have to be able to look at a board and find the best move essentially from scratch. This ability to look at a board for what it actually is right now (instead of in the context of your plans from 5 moves ago), is a very good skill to have.