My first dozen or so computer maps were pretty bad but the main thing was that I was determined to continue and make some good satellite style maps. My attempts took a few years of off-and-on experiments but I eventually got it to a place that I was happy with and that's when I "went public" with it. I've spent about as much time being public as I did being alone in my chair experimenting and I'll say that the time being public has made me so much better than sitting in my chair alone and experimenting. In my case I had a clear goal that I wanted to achieve - "I want to make a map that looks like this and I won't stop until I get it". But I'm obsessive like that and in the end I never achieved the goal but went in a different direction after getting close to what I wanted.

The thing with all software apps, CC3 or Photoshop, is that it's really easy to make crappy maps and as they say "nothing worthwhile is ever attained lightly". The learning curve of the various software can be intimidating but once you get past it it becomes second nature. Think of it like a street fight and don't let the software win. Despair is a natural side effect when one compares oneself to others so don't do it...compare your first map to your tenth map and you'll find that you're doing quite well.