Am I too old to excel in chess

I listened to a good podcast about adult learners in chess. It's definitely possible if you're prepared to put the work in.

1800-2000 is definitely achievable. 

Chess improvement is mostly about knowledge.

If you can find an affordable, experienced coach, you can accelerate your learning curve tremendously. They can immediately identify your knowledge gaps and tell you how to properly remedy them.

If that's not an option, then you should strive to learn whatever you can from sources like books (first choice), or YouTube (second choice).

But yes, you can certainly reach 2000 (or even higher), if you put in the effort to learn the game, and do it wisely.

Just don't expect it to happen overnight.

#1
"I am 54 years old" ++ Pink Floyd era

"My improvement has been slow .. 900 to 1200 in almost a year."
++ 1200 is a sign that you still hang pieces and pawns.
The cure is to always check your intended move is no blunder before you play it.
It is a little mental discipline that will bring you to 1500.

"Is it too late for me to start studying chess and try attempt least a 1800-2000 rating ?"
++ Once you have freed your game of blunders you can attempt 1800, or even 1900 or 2000.
It is mostly a matter of practice: play and analyse your lost games to learn from your mistakes.
Tactics puzzles are also good: 'chess is 99% tactics' - Teichmann
Study of grandmaster games is also good. Learn from the best.
Endgame study is good too. 'In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else.' - Capablanca

The opening poster just said that he improved 300 points in less than a year, and complains about it. People are weird.

I played the best game of my life at 62 years old.

A Heroic Defense in the Sicilian Najdorf - Kids, don't try this at home! - Chess Forums - Chess.com

This post was good, and I don't disagree with you but... I feel like this first sentence is...  at the very least misleading. If performance = knowledge then it makes no sense that the average age of the top 10 player is below 30 (!)

Especially in the beginning, performance is largely related to how well you can see the board (where can I move / where can my opponent move) and avoid blunders. It takes 99% of people at least a year to become very consistent at avoiding simple blunders.

For example, one thing I recently noticed low rated post-beginners doing is they are very aware of maybe 1 effect of the last piece moved, but can be blind to everything else... even if one of the effects was very important and very recent... let me give an example

This type of error happens all the time, and it's simply a matter of practice, not knowledge.
The fact is as a beginner, seeing that Qg6 threatens c2 is quite a lot of work. It's hard! Only after it becomes easy can a player start expanding their vision to notice other things as well.

IMO this basic process is a microcosm of nearly all chess improvement. If I learn about pawn structure for example, then I'm going to need a few months (or a year) and 100s of games (if not 1000s) before those new and useful ideas become automatic... and only then can I expand my ability to include something else.

That's how I see chess improvement anyway.

Getting 1800-2000 on chess.com shouldn't be impossible, question is how much time and energy can you put into this game? One year says nothing, how many puzzles, lessons, games and analysis of your lost games have you done in that time? 

And as always, don't play 5-10 min games in 30 min format and think that you are not playing blitz but rapid. Use your time well.

I truly believe that if you put enough time into chess, you can get to somewhere between 1500-2000. There is some natural barrier for everyone, but I think its way higher than people think it is. 

Young people climb the ratings faster, but there is nothing inherently that prevents older folks to climb to respectable levels, provided they put in the time into practice and study. 

The question is how persistent you are in achieving that goal and the consistency in your efforts is what's going to matter in the long run. 

Learning chess is equivalent to learning to play the piano. If you put enough time and effort into it, you'll probably be able to play beautifully. However, most likely you'll never be playing at Carnegie Hall. Another comparison, you can learn to box and get your body into wicked good shape even over 50, but there's no way you're going to be winning any championships against boxers half your age. 

If you were doing little else in life you could advance that far no doubt, but at our age we don't learn as well as we did.  Our hippocampi are deteriorating.  So if you have a day job, chess will just have to be a sideline.

In that case, I’d start with the Hippo Defense.