Well, nobody's going to ask to change yourself, especially since it's a single player game.

But I will say that there are lots of goals one can have, rather than just building a bigger house.

I sometimes find myself in that rut too. I try to have my Sims plan to do stuff on the weekends.

Currently I have a Sim who's at level 9 in the Military career and his wife is a stay-at-home mom wanting to be a professional author. Higher levels of the military, they only work like 3 days a week, so they can go out while the kids are at school.

Their five children hardly have time to do anything except on the weekends. The older two are now going steady with a couple other teens, the third just aged to teen, then there are the twins.

I love building; I think that about a quarter or, possibly, even a third of time I spent on (any of) my Sims games was dedicated to it.

On the other hand, the game proved you right. After I started it today my pater familias, after a decent period of mourning for his late wife (two days, according to EAxis), went to visit the fair. There he met a nice food vendor and they started flirting immediately - obviously he has a thing for merchants. He invited her over the next morning at 6 am (he could not do it the evening before because she was working) and by lunchtime, they were married and she was pregnant. A rather fast operator (he got his first wife, minus the pregnancy bit, in an afternoon), but this time he really had to act quickly because he is 99 days old and I am using the standard 90 days life span.

So that was not planned at all; it was his granddaughter who was supposed to get married next. But then - if Hefner can do it so can my Sim.

Stories grow in time, communities form in time, everything really - the time is the medium of life. This is how I began truly enjoying TS2, when I was already a Simmer veteran. The first hood I ever played with the rule "moar time!" is still very dear to me, I still remember those Sims and their little dramatic lives.

So I echo this advice: give your self more time. See the turtle? This should be your new emblem. If it is still not slow enough, slow it down some more!

ATM, for example, my TS3 world is enjoying its summer vacations in a Relativity governed setting of 40% normal time speed. I gave them full 2 weeks free (out of 3 in the season). The family I am currently playing is chasing after their stray desires: playing drums for the drums playing sake, getting suntans and snorkeling, learning mixology or nectar making, or simply being silly Sims on a sado-random rampage through a very lively hood. The game is finally making me laugh, like TS2 did oh so easily and it is doing so only because I refuse to let it stress me with its numerous random goals.

Another thing becomes apparent however, as a necessary supplement to this strategy: I am the one making the rules and setting the goals in my game. This has been The Sims for me, ever since that fateful day some 6-7 years ago when I set that basest of my rules: moar time.
That one is the only one I never broke, in fact.

This is basically how I play also. But it works out well for me because yes this game doesn't work very well if you want to play it any other way, and I've never been one for legacies anyway because I get too attached and don't like my sims to die I've never let my sims get normal jobs in any sims game either unless I want them out of my hair for a while, I've always hated the way jobs are set up in the sims so I don't bother with them.

By the way anyone who has an issue with sims getting rich too quickly, the best way to avoid that is by keeping them away from the normal jobs altogether. Send them out busking on the streets (not the subway) or bartending a few hours a day as a 'job' (they're not techincally counted as proper jobs in the game) and trust me they will most likely remain relatively poor for a long time. Also avoid other (in my opinion) cheaty ways to get money like selling stupid collectible rocks and butterflies.

You can create a murderer/hooker/shapeshifter/unicorn/play more than one household at a time.

What I usually do is use one of Twallan's mods to slow down time. It leaves me to do much more, and not have to rush everything. It makes gameplay so much more relaxed... And my Sims get to do actual fun activities too!