When I started I picked Rust because I’d been learning it and wanted to try using it on a more substantial project. I’m very happy with it as a choice of language: it definitely has a difficult learning curve especially with the way borrowing looks similar to references in a garbage-collected languages but works very differently. However, it’s a very expressive language: something about it makes it very easy to write code quickly that’s still very easy to follow later on.
I suspect everyone goes through a phase of hating borrowing when learning Rust: it's helpful to know that it's something that eventually 'clicks' and really stops being an issue. It didn't exist when I was learning, but 'Learning Rust with Entirely Too Many Linked Lists' looks like it would have helped a lot.