I've just found a book called Drive, which says motivation comes from three desires:

Autonomy- the desire to direct our lives.
Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters.
Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

Perhaps the book will help, though I've generally found self-help books to be similar in effect to Novocaine. They ease the pain temporarily, but leave your lips all puffy and numb.

Brilliant ideas or insights are welcome.

It bugs me too sometimes, that need for life to be something more than A Day In The Life Of. I hope though that I can take my tendency for introspection (which raises the question in the first place) and let it guide my fiction a little in ways I don't expect. Maybe in doing so I'll set my subconscious free and answer my own question.

Sometimes I do things out of pure vengence...missed the three again...

Sometimes I do things simply becuase I have nothing better to do - i'm not even sure what to call that...motivation by desire to waste time till I find something I have to do. Randomly browsing the internet is a good example.

I think largely my motivation these days is to accumulate enough money so i can pay for my delicining health when I get old. I have no illusions of an afterlife, and I have never felt a purpose to do anything larger than myself or not.

If fact the biggest motivator in my life seems to be laziness. I tend to maximize my efforts in ways that allow me to do neccessary things it the least amount of energy and time and money. In a way it's an avoidance of Autonomy. I don;t want to be responsible for too many thing - I'd give up freedoms for luxuries.

Now mastery...I admit I definitely had a motivation stemming from that desire. But those days died the minute I realized that everything I learn and master will mean nothing when i die. My brains will be mush, my neural pathways gone, and my mastery forever disappeard. And it only gets worse with age after 30. At best you can claim to be a master at soemthing till your 40s - then it's just downhill. Even science guys tell you that you do your best work before 35, before your neurons start degrading from old age. And I dont even have to take about sports. You pretty much have to born as a genius and develop all that skill at a young age then put into practice as an adult. Then you can say you're a master.

The article is "Your Brain on Books" by Fran Van Cleave, and if I could find a digital copy I'd put a link here about it. I'd say the article is worth the $6.95 price of the magazine.