I will say this right off the bat... take heart, the first 10 levels really blow chunks hard. It gets a lot better. You gain a number of abilities and a great deal of power from 10-15, and by 20 the game plays rather nice.

Questing with a friend is infinitely better than solo, especially in the first 20 levels. If you can't find a friend to quest with, most things are public, so you can kinda hang around until more people show up. A good tactic here is hang around by the quest giver for the quest you'd like to do, then wait to actually start the quest until someone else comes and picks it up. Then just kinda follow them around and kill stuff together.

That's really the best aspect of ESO, cooperative open world PVE, unlike most MMO's where open world PVE is definitively adversarial.

Guilds would probably be a great place to find some people to quest with, as it just saying in zone chat that you're running quests in X level range and wonder if anyone would like to quest with you. Even blind invites work pretty well, although I can't personally bring myself to randomly invite a stranger to group with me... although due to the cooperative nature, it's really not required to actually be in a group to work together. I've countless times ran with people for an entire quest, sometimes 2-3 quests, without ever officially grouping with them.

Do you use block/evade/interrupt. I'm asking because I didn't pay too much attention to it on my first toon and life was hard but on my new DK life is so much easier once I've learned how to use these properly.

Being a DK there's plenty of hard-hitting abilities that use magicka too, so I would recommend putting some points into magicka too (although it really depends on your build).

While sub lvl 10 you dont have as many skills or resources, the enemies fall over and die when you look at them. The only exception is the bosses, but even they are easy with a knock down or CC.

I would say spend some time figuring out your spec and what to do in certain situations. It seems to me, no offense intended, but your level of skill in these types of games is low. Ideally, you always want a CC/knock down/stun on your bar. Stonefist from your Earthen Heart tree should always be on your bar until you get the hang of things or unlock something better. Any time he gets off the ground, hit him with it again. Make sure you dont run yourself out of magicka.

Good gear and weapons does make a difference, spending time looting chests will give good drops. Run along the coast to find them.

Dark talons or stone fist will sort you out mate. Like others say when you unlock more class utility skills it's gets easier.

First of all, most of the armor passives are % based, seeing as you done have a lot of stats yet. Its not worth going in to there yet. Just invest in skills so your stuff is more flexible.
I didnt start investing into armor passives untill way into level 20

Second while armor upgrades are marginal (important, but less important) 5 weapon levels actually make around a 10-15 dmg difference.
In your case this is nearly a 100% improvement. Even with the lowest blacksmith skill you should be able to make 1 your level.

As a dk skills i advise you to nearly always have on your bar:
Dark/burning talons (amazing CC can stop melee adds from hitting you)
Green dragonblood. an amazing selfheal when your low + stam and health regen.
Critical charge, Brawler and either reverse slash or the single target burn skill can be used to finish up your build.

personally i used magma armor ultimate throughout my leveling experience, the near immunity combined with dragonblood self heal is amazing + It lets you level all your skill trees.

i suggest using control effects as much as possible. as a sorc i use destructive clench, and volcanic rune. the rest of my slots are taken by my summons and empowered ward (damage shield with buff for summons damage). this way i can support my summons as they do the bulk of the damage, and it keeps the enemies off their feet.

my second weapon is slotted with the afromentend daedric summoning skills, but the control skills are replaced with dark exchange and illustrious healing, i only use that build when either a enemy cant be cc'd, or im in a group battle, since im a squishy mage ill let my daedra do damage will i keep everyone nice and healed by spamming illustrious healing, this also minimized the threat i produce since im not doing damage, my summons are. and when i get enough ult for an atronach or bat swarm, things get even better.

yes, sometimes my battles take a while, but so long as im alive, and they are not, its a win in my book, plus sometime a long drawn out battle is fun.