[starsailor]

+1 to allthumbs, use the exercise your friend has given you it's a good warm up and keep it as part of your practice, but spice things up a bit with a few chords, it's important to keep your practice interesting, and you're at the stage where you're getting used to the feel of your guitar so it does take patience, keep up the good work atonement you will have ups and downs when you start, we all experience times where we hit a brick wall it's part of the learning curve, and nothing unusual, I have good days and bad days, I think a lot of players do even the pros so don't worry about that too much you're doing ok