a little motivation, anyone?

[Medley8086]

Ok, I'm running a win98 partition and a linux partition.  I have all sorts of
programming tools, and have studied how to program in assembly and c++.  In
addition, I plan to know c (should I bother after c++?  give me your opinion),
pascal, euphoria, and some scripting languages by the end of the summer. 
Through all this planning, however, I keep running into the same problem with
learning how to program.  I'm teaching myself, so the motivation isn't there. 
I've tried thinking of things that i think would be challenging for me to
create, rather than necessary, so now the most off-putting thing is not knowing
whether my progress is good.  What I'm asking is, could i please have some
posts of what some of you other programmers made when you were starting out, in
what languages, and how long it took.  I'm looking for stories to convince me
while trying to work with stubborn code that I'm not algorithmically
handicapped or just not cut out to be a coder at all.  Thanks in advance for
anyone who decides to help.

E. Leron Culbreath