I may well get shot down for this but I don't think you should be kicking yourself for not beating nl2. When you're starting out you don't just have to be better than the other people, you have to be better than luck, which is an inescapable part of poker.
If you're on a 10-man table then all things being equal you're only getting the best hand a tenth of the time - of course you can't just play the top 10% of hands - that wouldn't work anyway, so you have to know enough to beat luck.
In a lot of pursuits just being better than the other guy is enough but I think in poker you have to beat the game as well as the people - particularly since you're against 9 others at a time.
I sometimes wonder, though, how a darts player would do against 9 other people with 3 darts each, taking the score of the best 3 of their 27 darts against his 3. He'd have to be pretty good to win - this helps me stay out of trouble in the early stages of a micro sit n go, which is much the same if you ask me.