Eight Little Loops of Yarn

Do you see the six loops of yarn around the crochet hook? That represents an hour of effort. 

And, despite an hour of effort and multiple attempts, it's not the right number of loops. I'm fairly confident that the loops I do have are looping the right way and doing the right thing...but I'm going to have to start over yet again if I want to get through the cast on and onto the knitting part.

The Magic Circle Cast on is hugely popular and probably everyone but me knows how to do it...but I don't and I can't and the whole point of Sock Madness is to learn new tricks, but my fingers aren't dexterous enough for this and the whole doing a right hand thing left handed, which is almost never a problem with my knitting, is kicking my butt today. (I did find a video showing the cast on left handed if you need the same thing I did.)

I'm not on an actual team this year so no one is going to enforce rules against me if I use a different cast on. Do I let eight little loops of yarn stop me from going any further? It sounds like such a silly little thing, but after trying to get those loops to loop, I can assure you that it's not as easy as it sounds.