Don't give up the ship. If the 88 is not beyond salvage, pehaps you could find something slightly less challenging that would might help you improve your skillset so that you could later comeback to it with renewed confidence. Perhaps some of the treadheads here might know of such a kit.
I sort of got into armor for a similar reason. Previously, I was usually a ship and aircraft guy. So when I got back into model building a few years back, that's what I built. Then I got some good 1/700 ships and got really intimidated by the photoetch. So my first tank that I started was really done with the idea of developing my skills with photo-etch and CA glue. Not only are the parts bigger, but if you make a mistake its easy to pull off the offending part, scrape the glue and retry. My skills with photo-etch have improved 1000 percent during the construction of my close to complete Sherman, and by the time I finish with all the !@#$% tanks I bought in the meantime, I'll probaly be able to confidently attack my ships.