I "learned" to program when I was a teenager because I wanted to write games.

Then I learned to program because I worked in a software company.

Now I like to learn new languages because it's very fun to explore the mindset that comes along with a language.

I write programs because it's fun and because it can make my life easier. Right now I'm finishing up a little program that reads the RSS feed of a few webcomics I like, extracts relevant info (title, date, commentary, etc.) and adds it to the comic image which gets saved locally on disk. It's not very useful, but it saves me from going to the websites, and mostly it's fun to write.

When I was considering learning to program, I too thought it was a tedious and boring task, but worthwhile because of the applications. Now that I've been programming for a bit, I realize it's quite the contrary: programming is the opposite of tediousness. It's about finding a way of abstracting tasks so that they don't need to be repeated. It can be quite artistic.

Also, programming will give you power over your computer. There should not be popup balloons telling you what to do. As a programmer, you tell your computer exactly what you want it to do. I don't believe in power over other living beings, but power over a CPU can be quite a good feeling :o)

Start simple. Maybe a good introduction to programming is beginning to use the command line shell for your everyday tasks. When you understand its power, you'll only want more. And there is always more! Hooray for Turing completeness!