How do you stay motivated to play the game?

I take breaks when I feel like my game is getting stale. I'll play something else, or concentrate on building/remodeling. With the upcoming jungle pack, I have a collector Sim who has already finished the aspiration (thanks to the City Posters collection) and I've got her working on another aspiration while she works on her garden (in case there are any new plants) and I've also got her working on Herbalism (got to figure there are narsty bugs in the jungle to repel). The storyline is that she ran away from home as a teenager to escape her evil father who was planning to marry her off to one of his business partners' son to seal a deal. The family lawyer helped her access some of the money in her trust fund, so she moved into an apartment in San Myshuno on her own for a bit, and with some freelance work and hacking she was able to earn enough for a farmhouse in Newcrest. Ultimate goal is for her to complete as many collections as she can before she dies then the next generation will take over -- I'm not sure if she's going to marry her friend Tyler Butterfield, a game-generated vampire she's currently good friends ith, or if she'll marry Liam O'Dourke who just moved to town and was her only friend back home (her father discouraged fraternization with the lower classes, but she met Liam when she was hanging out at the museum looking at the space alien collection and they became friends).