Generating is supposed to be hard.

Also, generating is not really the point of Bitcoin. Trading is.

You can join a pooled mining effort, but with a CPU you can currently expect to generate appox. 0.02 - 0.06 BTC per day. That is if you keep your CPU running 24/7 at full power.  A background trickle process will generate a lot less and expect this number to go down in the next few weeks. 

In my opinion, mining is something for enthusiasts/professionals, not for casual/newbie users.

If you are really enthusiastic about mining then be prepared to invest at least a few hundred dollars and several hours of your time. Otherwise it's not really worth it.