Hey Maddog--
One thing's for sure. There are about as many opinions on 'how to' as there are people playing. Let me tell you what happened with me.
I picked up the guitar at the age of 12 without a clue as to what to do. What I did was picked up a book of chords and learned all the basic ones--I wasn't real concerned about some of the off-beat ones.
I decided that what I wanted to do was to a) learn how to tune the guitar impeccably, and b) just learn how to switch between chords cleanly, learn to strum a basic strum well and sing at the same time.
And that's what happened. We're all different, that's for sure. But what I recognized was that what would be important was for me to learn to train my ear to
hear what was important!
It's important to learn to tune your axe and keep it in good tune at all times, and to learn to listen to another guitar for how well that player is keeping his or her guitar in tune. This will help you tremendously in the future.
Secondly, the guitar is primarily a chord and rhythm instrument. So there's just no substitute for learning to switch cleanly between chords while playing a basic rhythm. The next thing to pay attention to is how you hold your pick and how to reduce pick noise while strumming. Those things are what are important to learn, and to learn well.
The real benefit from having a personal teacher is that they can not only develop a particular plan for you, and help you keep striving in the right direction, but they can also tailor a plan to help you have fun along the way. So, that's some food for thought.
But since I never had that, when I would reach plateaus (like you are now) I would get discouraged. The thing that kept me going was my drive to learn to do just what I already knew how to do. I wanted to become better every day. So don't be afraid to go over what you already know and become better. You'll find that you will learn a little something more about what you thought you already knew well.
So here's what I recommend to do at this point. Forget about scales and notes at this point. You mentioned that you became hooked when you first heard that ringing of the amp, so I take you're learning on electric? I would recommend learning first on an acoustic. I'm not saying you can't learn on the electric, though, so just work with what you have!
Next, learn 15 or so chords. Not memorized them, just have them handy. What you do want to memorize for now are about six of them. So take these chords and check out this lesson:
Form Chords and Switch Between Them Quickly.
Tell us how your progress is, and we'll go from there.
Have a good one,
Steve