Hi From Stockholm

Hi folks,
Just thought I'd post an introduction. How did I wind up here? Well I saw this cool looking "Strat" look-a-like body online and won the bid. A friend of mine is an amateur guitar builder so he wired it up for me and and fixed the things that reminded me of why it's a $50 body of unknown origin. I thought how cool it would be to actually learn to play it. I really dig this machine. I've sat in my practice room and just hypnotized myself for hours repeatedly strumming the three or four chords that I learned so far. Is this behavior unhealthy? Should I seek counseling?

I've always loved guitar from Hendrix to George Benson to McGlaughlin to Al Dimeola, but the thought of playing this instrument always seemed completely beyond reach. All those notes. At least a piano has a visual roadmap, 3 black keys, two white, two black and so forth, but this instrument, well, it just always seemed like tic-tac-toe from hell. 22 frets, 6 strings. I decided to play and memorize just all the Gs. I know where all the Gs are now. Only 120 more notes to go.

However, after finding and following some of the Absolute Beginner lessons here and putting in some time practicing scales, picking and spider exercises, a few weeks on, suddenly, things don't seem quite as far fetched.

I'm 52, an American living in Sweden, and have previously studied the rudiments of music with the flute and a little piano, so I think perhaps some months down the line I might actually be able to play a real tune or maybe two.

One thing that bugs me though; Was the guy who invented the guitar a lefty? It doesn't seem reasonable to me that the most difficult work, the fretboard, should be done with the off side hand. I mean, is there something I'm not aware of that makes picking and strumming that much more difficult than working the frets? Wouldn't it be better for a righty to use his right hand to fret? I need to know this because it's still early days and as fingering got more difficult, I started seriously thinking of getting a Left Handed guitar, which just makes more sense to me, but I might be missing something. So my question is; Is there some overwhelming reason that right handed players choose to fret with their left hand?

Anyway, happy to be here and looking forward to improving.

Cheers,
Clive.