It's pretty easy unless you want to be Steve Vai.
I've been playing for about 10 years, never had a lesson. I started out just doing tab from simple songs and basic power chord stuff, really it's a piece of piss after the initial month of bad barre chords and spasmodic progressions.
While someone that practices 3 hours a day and has lessons every week will be better than me after a year solid (ha, probably even sooner), I don't really care for that sort of ability - ie hair metal lead breaks.
I can play pretty much anything I hear or want to and compose songs so thats enough for me.
you'll be surprised how after a month of tooling around you'll already be playing a few licks from you favourite songs (so long as your favourite songs aren't by al dimeola
)