FWIW, you're learning two major paradigms at once: the immutable/functional paradigm and a Lisp, and Clojure itself has very strong opinions about the former. You'll get a very different feel from, say, Racket.

Is there something in particular you're having a hard time with, out of curiosity? I don't consider myself particularly brilliant but I didn't have a year's worth of trouble with Clojure.