Okay, first off, I've been trying to make games for the past 5 years, if not longer, and it's plain to see, I'm doing something wrong! (that and not enough motivation)

Heres the rough steps I take when making a game, with reasons why I'm doing it; If someone has any suggestions, PLEASE do so.
1) Get a general Idea; Write a little bit about it (If I write too much about it, I abandon the game cause of the complexities)

2) Do some art which hopefully will make it thru to beta stage (Since I've Never had a good artist willing to help, I'm stuck making my own, so I make some "official" art so I know that I can make the rest easily enough)
3) Spend a few days looking at engines to pick the one I want (usually it's Irrlicht or Panda3D)
4) Start Programming

<--Then I stop due to lack of interest or I never make it this far because of art, theres a few times I get past this-->
5) Make some more assets and add them into the game

6) Program some more features

Repeat 5-6 until I get what I'm aiming for; I never get to 6 because the "more assets" are usually art that I find a hard time doing and no one else wants to do so it doesn't end up so well -.-'

Any hints of what I may be doing wrong? other than loosing interest or giving up too fast >.<

Yeah, art is a problem for most of us developers with no sense of it and ADHD as well. I don't have much advice to give other than to try to use some debug crappy asset till you develop the features you want.

Have you accomplished anything ? Are you trying 2D or 3D ? I am assuming 3D by the choice of Panda3D.

You must have a generalized theme you are clearly interested in ? If so, Press on building your art or 3D models tool box until and idea comes to mind.

I built a 3D Space exploration type game with 1 Player Ship, 1 Enemy Ship, 1 Docking Station.

My game Started out with exploring a section of a planets surface looking for randomly placed Clues / Plans to build other space ships or mining equipment.

The mission was to assembly a set of plans. Since these plans had to be assembled from the clues, thise gave me enough time to design other ships and build on my game engine that I had designed.

So based upon your order of the game design process I Would re-order as such

1 - (3) Pick a language and SDK and stick with it.

2 - (2) Built your art work / 3D Models. ( Vehicles are easy in that the need Little or No Animation )

3 - (4) Start Programming. Every Program has a certain set of elements. Graphics Intialization, Disk operations, Player input ( Keyboard / Joystick/\ / Game pad. Build that and then save this a seperate utility program to add to or build on later.

4 - (1) Get an Idea. Fledge it out. Maybe work it as a table top game or something where you can see how it might work.

5 - (5) Make any additional assets

6 - (6) Do some more programming. Even if you give it up, you have something going.

I've been like that for a while, and then I managed to finally finish a project.

Differently from the rest, this last time it worked out for me because:

A) I knew what I was going for exactly. I knew what start, middle and ending that I wanted for the project.

B) It was a project small enough that I could complete in the smallest time possible without me getting overburned.

If you set out to make something grandiose or something without a specific, planned ending to it, you'll start drifting and will give up.

Be realistic.

I think I see the flaw that is hindering the original poster's efforts. Parts of creating something are the desire to see it brought into reality and your willful role in shaping it to your own image.

Follow up, so is there anything else you prefer to think about that may be distracting you?

Yeah, art is a problem for most of us developers with no sense of it and ADHD as well. I don't have much advice to give other than to try to use some debug crappy asset till you develop the features you want.

Thankfully, I've overcame that little problem. Art isn't a problem as it once was...sure HUD will be a pain in the rear, but I know enough to make the basic HUD and I can spend hours later trying to perfect it;

1 - (3) Pick a language and SDK and stick with it.

Basically it's Irrlicht or Panda3D, depending on what I'm aiming for; This newest project (lets hope it works out!) will be done in Panda3D; primary reason: it's the only engine I got to step 6 with >.< the only reason why that game was canceled was because I did a very stupid thing and told Panda to do collision detection using a ray-polygon with every polygon that wasn't the character...and that was a few years ago now...

I have the same problem with art. I cant draw at all so its hard to see the games come to life and you lose motivation.

In the worse case scenario, i would use crappy drawings in paint until you have everything programmed the way you want. Since you're just one person, do the thing you're best at first. That's what motivates you

Since tha art is the bottleneck for continuing a project or abandoning it i would suggest using temporary art. I always say, if a game is not fun playing with boring place holder art then it will not be fun with amazing art either. Just make a some place holder cubes or download some more fitting art, you can even use commercial art temporarily as long as you do not distribute your work or do marketing with it.

When your project is getting shape you can decide to put in some good art, maybe the game has real good potential and you decide to pay for some good art.