tpharker,
Mike East wasn't saying that you had to be a competition pilot when you are flying. But rather he was pointing out that if you are bored flying then you just may not be pushing yourself enough. If you are bored now with your Nexstar, moving up to a newer different plane isn't going to help you much. It won't take you long to be bored with it too. Boredom in flying doesn't come from the plane, but rather it comes from the pilot. A pilot gets bored because they aren't challenging themselves. There are very few planes out there that you can actually get bored on. Most any planes, including trainers, can be lots of fun spending endless hours on practicing and flying maneuvers on. For example, right now one of my favorite planes is my GP Slow Poke. When I first built it I thought I wouldn't enjoy flying it very much. After flying now, I can't get enough of it. I try to see just how SLOWLY I can do every maneuver that I know how to do. It's such a blast. I try to see how long I can keep it in the air on one tank of fuel (OS 52 Surpass 4-stroke with an 8 oz tank), my current record is 32 minutes of flight!!! It goes with me to the field every day, and gets airtime every trip.

I'm not trying to chastise you at all, just trying to get you to see what everybody it saying here. Try challenging yourself on your Nexstar and you may find yourself "addicted" to perfecting a certain maneuver on it. As an instructor I've seen this happen before. In fact, I had on student that I taught a couple of summers ago come up to me about 3 months after he soloed and told me that he was bored flying because "he could do it all now". After a few "demo flights" showing him just what a trainer was capable of, he suddenly changed his tune and started spending lots of time at the field practicing his flying.

Trust me, challenge yourself and you might be surprised at what happens!!

Ken