What is the challenge of guitar? Is it the physical coordination? It seems like every one of my friends has played guitar before and some even own guitars, but when they actually try to play a song, 95% of them can't even get through an entire 15 seconds before messing up somewhere.
My recommendations for getting started with portable guitar playing:
1. Get a Jamstik+ portable guitar: (note: check RetailMeNot.com first)
https://jamstik.com
2. Get a lifetime membership to Next Level Guitar. Do one lesson a day. It will keep you busy for years:
http://nextlevelguitar.com
3. Get the audiobook for the Talent Code: (to gain a deeper understanding of how talent really works)
https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-Grown-Summary/dp/B01990CKN6
4. Read this article on memorization: (to use for learning music)
http://www.johnplaceonline.com/study-smarter/how-to-memorize-anything/
Guitar is fun because strumming strings just has a magical quality about it. With a Jamtik+, you have a nice little portable unit that you can use to learn how to play a full-size guitar without the size & space investment, and you also don't have to be locked into just a ukulele. You have an enormous number of techniques to learn to keep you busy & a virtually lifetime supply of music out there to learn how to play, not to mention compose yourself.
The first thing I tell people is that there is a difference between playing and practicing. Jamming for fun is not practicing. Casually playing is not practicing. Practicing is where you sit down and study either new information or hone your existing skills. Even live bands practice relentlessly to reduce the number of mistakes they make live. The hard part isn't learning, it's injecting a time slot into your day as an "appointment" so that you're spending even just 10 minutes a day making progress with your musical education & skills. Basically it's so simple that it's hard - it's such an easy thing to do that people don't do it consistently. Instruments aren't hard to learn, and people who get into music usually end up picking up a bunch of them (piano, guitar, drums, synth, etc.) because it's a simple skill. It's that daily or weekly progress thing that is difficult. That's why I recommend Next Level Guitar - nice little bite-size videos to keep you moving along every day. Set an appointment with yourself, like right before bed or when you first wake up or after lunch, and do a lesson & then practice every day, or M/W/F, or whatever your schedule allows, but make it an actual appointment on your calendar that you have to keep so that you can keep yourself on the path of making progress on a regular basis.
The second thing I tell people is to make it convenient. Keep your instrument handy, save the login password to your online guitar lessons to your browser, make it so you can jump right in as needed, and also pick it up & goof off whenever you want, instead of shoving it away in a closet or whatever where it's not something you'll visually trip over every day. Out of sight = out of mind & in sight = easy to feel inspired because you're like, hey, guitar! Fun! Play!
The third thing I suggest is to pick a style or genre that inspires you & watch videos and find & listen to new music from it every day to keep you feeling motivated, whether it's speed metal or flamenco or acoustic pop or whatever. Especially with stuff like Youtube & Spotify & Soundcloud, there's just so much cool stuff out there to discover that it's crazy. Here's an old but good video that I like with fingerstyle:
Anyway, music is a pretty fulfilling thing. The trick is simply setting things up so that you stay in the flow. Learning music & instruments isn't hard at all, the secret is just keeping that momentum up every day so that you're always growing. Also, one of the best definitions I've heard of "talent" is that talent is the speed at which you can acquire a new skill. So if you're super talented, you can pick something up quick & pick it up young, which is amazing, but not really all that related to what you want to do. Some people are naturally more talented than others, meaning that they can pick up the techniques for learning the instrument faster & memorize the music quicker, but that doesn't have any correlation to what you want to do, because music is a very individual thing. It's like running a marathon - only one person can be the fastest in the race, and everyone else is just working on their PR's, their individual bests. Also, for a fun visualization on someone with a lot of talent, watch the video of this kid with his guitar...he's picked up the techniques & memorized the songs pretty quick, and obviously has the ability to visualize the music in his head & get into the flow pretty good: