Plateaued

My guitar playing has reached an unfortunate plateau .  After months of steady growth from online tutorials, the F chord has me stymied.  I can't seem to get a handle on it.  I get it sometimes but not consistently, and it really does take a few seconds to position my fingers to play it.  I don't know what else to do besides practice more, but, because I'm always honest here, I have to say that I'm saddened that practicing is coming to be not-so-fun.

I want to keep it fun because there is absolutely no pressure, but when I try so hard and feel like I'm getting nowhere it becomes frustrating.  I start each practice with my finger warm-up, then strum-pick-strum each chord that I've learned.  After that review, I start my one-minute changes (which are now all changes to the F chord), and the minute is considered a success if I manage twenty changes or more.  Seriously.  That's a chord change every three seconds at best, so what I'm essentially saying is that my best is horrible.  I start with F to C, nail 19 changes, and then I play some tunes that I can play decently just to make myself feel better.  Then I get 22 changes from F to E, and play some more songs that make me feel better about myself.  Then I get 24 changes from F to D, and I feel like I might be getting the hang of it!  After I change only 22 times from F to Am, I play another song I can feel good about.  By the time F to G comes around, my hand hurts and I score a 20.    Blah.  Having a good time is starting to feel like a lot of work.

Justin is really good at what he does and he's taught me well so far, but I'm wondering if I would do better with a real teacher.  I probably would because no one (besides my family and they know nothing about this) hears or watches me play so I'm never evaluated.  It would behoove me to have someone who knows about these things tell me what I'm doing wrong.  I'm sure Larry the Luthier can recommend several local teachers to me, so I may start there.  Or maybe I won't.  You see, the good thing about having Justin as my teacher is that there is never a chance for me to be embarrassed because I never have to play for him.  If I have an in-the-flesh teacher, well then I'm going to have to play before a trained musician and he or she is going to tell me what I'm doing wrong.  I'll be nervous and someone will be critical of me.  Both of those things also sound not-so-fun to me.

So what do I do?  I don't know yet.  I'm keeping at it and hoping that the day that it all comes to me is nearly here.  It has always come; it's just taking its good old time on this stage.  Maybe Brian will read this and get me guitar lessons for Christmas so I'm forced to face my fears of humiliation and constructive criticism.  (That's not a hint.)  I just want to get this already because I know there's a lot more to learn and I really want to learn it.