Hi, NinjaChick, I love your tattoos.
I started playing under some kind of guidance only a month ago and was extremely enthusiastic about it at first, but the initial upswing was followed by an ugly downswing and I kind of gave up. Only a serious, enduring interest in poker has kept me going. But others have told me that they spent a couple of months bleeding money before they turned the corner. Sure, it's great to hear the stories of players who crush the game from the second they start playing and never drop below the break-even points in their bankrolls, but not every winning poker player was always a winner. One pro (I forget his name) went totally broke twice but managed eventually to turn poker into a full-time career. And, when Chris Ferguson did his $1 to $100,000 challenge, yes, he did turn $1 into $100,000 in a few months, but before that happened he lost his $1 and had to reload EIGHT times. (This latter fact is not generally known.)
Someone in this thread said that MTTs have high variance. That's absolutely true, especially if you play to make it to final table instead of playing to win pennies by barely getting into the money. Playing for final table involves taking more risks and therefore suffering more bad beats. As the strategy articles point out, a cash table is like a tournament with infinite rebuys for the entire time you play. A tourney table either has rebuys only for the first hour or doesn't have rebuys at all.
My suggestion is that you think about whether you can handle the variance of MTTs. If long waits before a payday wear you out, try playing cash. The standard deviation for cash is only about 85, which is about one-tenth the standard deviation for MTTs.
Alternatively, you can try STTs (such as single-table sit and gos). Those also have less variance and, if you're any good, you should be able to cash in them often enough at least to break even. Heck, even I break even in STTs--or was breaking even on them on Full Tilt until I lost enthusiasm because of what happened Friday. My current site (Cake) has no action on STTs or I'd still be playing them.
But the other poster was right in saying you need to work on your game if you're going to be a winner. Just playing without hand analysis and study is not enough. I admit I'm a lazy minimalist who never learned how to study, but even I'm trying to be diligent.
Hope some of these thoughts helped.