What motivates you to paint?

EDIT: poll is playing up, so sorry about that (see below).


One of the reasons I started blogging was to motivate myself to paint, and to paint better, because I would be posting pictures of the figures here.

To a certain extent this has worked, but one problem I have is that for space reasons I tend to either paint or play, and thus do not combine the two very well.  I need to get on a roll to paint, and when I get out of the habit of sitting down with the brushes (and it doesn't take me long to get out of the habit!) it can be a real struggle to pick one up again.

So, my question to you, dear reader(s), is what is it that makes you pick up the paint brush and paint?  I don't mean just thinking about painting, or researching painting, or - God forbid - ordering more figures to paint; I mean actually sitting down, picking up your brush, opening a paint pot and doing it.

On the top right of this blog you should now be able to see a poll, so if you feel like answering, please choose as many of the options there as you feel apply to you.

I'm fascinated by what it is that gets people from the 'hmm, I really should do some painting' to the 'look, I've just finished a unit!' stage, so if you feel that the poll does not allow you to express your experience properly, by all means add comments below.  In fact, I'd be very happy for you to comment for any reason :)

Many thanks,
Aaron

EDIT: sorry all; for some reason the poll seems to be malfunctioning.  It keeps shedding answers and is not remembering earlier responses.  I'm not quite sure what the problem is, but it looks like it's not recording the information properly.  Thanks for all your responses, and sorry for the odd behaviour of the poll widget thingy.  It was looking good there for a moment :(