Spoken Chinese is much easier to learn than Japanese or French, in my experience. Coming from English, I find that the grammar isn't that difficult while word order is very relaxed. Since most native speakers have an accent or dialect anyways, there is no pressure to speak in a standard way (I find I'm more understandable when I talk as casually and loosely as possible).

I gave up on written Chinese a while ago. I can text well enough and do some simple IM conversations, basically my writing mirrors my oral skills fairly closely. But I can't read a sign, a notice, a newspaper, its almost another language and I'm not so interested in putting the effort in.