I did some at school when I was a kid, and the smallest amount of Hardanger (which involves some cross stitching) as a teenager, but none since. I did not find it hard to get into when doing it again as an adult, and the worst thing you have to do is memorise numbers of stitches, and keep track of where you are in the pattern. Other than that, I can only think that you may get bored making the same stitch all the time, but that would depend on your boredom threshold. Plus, as I said to a friend on twitter, there's all sorts of nerdy stuff available now, and also you can adapt pixel arts/sprites!

I mean yeah, bits of it are finicky, especially if you're doing a complex pattern. But I wouldn't say it was difficult to pick up at all.