I think Arduino is definitely for you. I had looked at C before with a big ol' fancy software and it swamped me. After that, I was very happy with Arduino. Use is very simplified and there is tons of help to learn how to program.
The Arduino software and programs you write with it is C, but it takes a little bit of the complexity/difficulty out. Still, you can program Arduino with normal C with a general C programming software/compiler. I don't know the details on this, but there's more information out there about that, for example, the Arduino website.