How to experience the thrill of mining? Bitcoins are hard to mine now. I've always wanted to actually earn them, but never actually gotten much of anything. I want to create my own blockchain, separate from any other networks, so that mining will be faster and I'll actually be able to experience the thrill of mining bitcoins.

Will someone give me a suggestion, program link, or what have you re: a private network? I just want to try it. Not a spendable coin fork, just something that I can enjoy watching for a bit.
Have you tried understanding why you have that desire? It might help you understand more about what makes you tick.

You might like to try mining Litecoins, or even on the Bitcoin Testnet. Or, you could try some Bitcoin mining with the Eligius pool, which from memory will pay out any amount after 2 weeks (whereas most pools have a minimum payout). If you can manage to mine 0.01BTC, that is enough to make a transaction from most eWallets (again, they often have a minimum transaction, usually 0.01BTC), and you could possibly even buy something from coindl.com with it.

Alternatively, you might get more satisfaction by playing Minecraft (it has a free trial), which can give the same sense of satisfaction when  you find something of "value".

Another option to consider is earning some dollars, or whatever your local currency is, and exchanging it for bitcoins. Or even just save some dollars on electricity by not mining, and exchange those for bitcoins. Or, sell something on bitmit maybe?