How about just a bit of joy? Something you do because it's in some way fulfilling and brings you a real, yet temporal, sense of joy?

I struggle with this when I don't have a "project" of some sort. It's all-too-easy for me to slip into a haze of doing nothing, feeling nothing, creating nothing, pursuing nothing.

Just coasting through life, waiting and watching. But it's never enough. I'm never "inspired," but when I get going through discipline and basically dragging myself into things that I'm trying to think of a hundred reasons not to do, I get a feeling that I'm enjoying this and should carry on.

Take books for an example. I fucking hate reading, for the most part, but, once I get stuck in, I suddenly don't hate reading. Same with writing at moments I don't want to write.

Like that quote "I hate reading, but I love having read."

The same is true for me when I'd rather just slip into some sort of slumber. I spent too many years waiting to be brought out of it by someone, something, never me. But now I know that, it's not exactly excitement that I do these things for. It's either joy or connectedness in some way.