Music is love (but I'm not so sure about recording)

I've spent almost three hours this afternoon trying to record some music, and I reckon I've successfully got about one and a half minutes down. I almost managed to get the last minute and a half done too, but gave up when my fingers started hurting too much and my irritation with the headphones became too strong (they kept slipping off midway through the last section, so I was left concentrating harder on keeping them nearly on my head than on playing the perfect take).

So what am I doing wrong? Do I have the wrong plan - should I just sit down, record something, and be done with it? (Especially bearing in mind the fact that hardly anyone will ever hear what I've recorded anyway.) At the end of the day, every 'take' captures one unique moment, with all its own sort of beauty and all its own flaws. What is there to gain in trying to 'beat' one of these earlier moments?

The trouble is that I know I won't listen to what I've recorded again with any sort of satisfaction if I've not done something pretty bloody close to the best of my abilities; and because I don't play every day, don't play in a band, don't play regularly enough with a metronome, it takes me a long time to get the right mood in even a thirty second snippet of very simple guitar. And that's without all the stresses of perfect 'mood' takes that collapse heaving to the ground a few paces from the finishing line because of a slip of a finger or sudden over-confidence. So I think it's got to be like this; eventually, I'll get better at it, and it won't take so long. And I think that there's a degree to which the final take - whichever one it turns out to be - feeds on all the ones before it, often in ways we don't notice - perhaps a nuance of emphasis or attack, perhaps in the rhythms, perhaps even the way the instrument is positioned. And given that every recorded moment has the advantage of uniqueness, the final one has to do something else to be the best - and I think the right notes, tight rhythm and sound are the bare minimum required.

So I don't think it's wasted time - I just wish I could guarantee that there'd be something to show for every hour I spend at it.