I agree - it's much more likely to remain interesting if you can get some chords and strumming so you can play 'real songs'.
If you google something like 'chords Yesterday' (or whatever song you might like to try) there will be a number of sites which show chord diagrams of all chords used in a song, and then print which chord to play within the lyrics. You can look for songs that have only a few chords, to start with. Somewhere on the forum is a post entitled 'easy songs' (something like that) with a huge list.
Common chords in songs: <C, F, G> or <A, D, E> or <G, C, D>. These chords are usually learned early in the guitar-twanging process (F is the toughest of those, it seems). There are some posts (maybe even stickies above the forums) that show much about chords. There are also some posts (stickies?) about strumming.
Go for it!