You're right I think. Most adults really don't improve at chess very often. They do when it's a new hobby, but then they plateau. And it's not that they couldn't improve further, it's just that they're not able or willing to do the things necessary, which is usually a lot of exercise and study. It's just a hobby for most people at the end of the day, and they'd rather spend an hour at the club discussing and blitzing some silly openings with friends than spend an hour solving puzzles or studying endgames. We still all carry the illusion of some prospect of improvement, that's the human condition. But most people don't take it very seriously and are more in it for social reasons.
It clearly aggravated some of the people at the Go club that I was not improving past hobbyist. But the thing I didn’t share with them is that all through my childhood, I would try new things and if I wasn’t instantly mediocre or better at it I would decide this was no fun and drop it. If you are good at enough things you can fill your weeks with activities and ignore the things you aren’t good at.
Being bad at Go and still playing anyway was an exercise in personal growth.
