Ya know, I’m happy to get paid for something I loved doing, but sometimes the opposite arrangement makes me way less interested in doing it. I’ve been an author who actually sells work for quite a while now and while I love carefully crafting publishable, relevant stuff, I NEED to have personal projects where I’m not worrying about whether they’re marketable. My two webcomics are in that category, and I don’t want that to change. I’m awfully tired of people constantly wanting everything turned into a side hustle.
This reminds me of an episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks. The engineering team is ordered to stop working to relax, but their version of relaxing is just to work on projects that interest them rather than their assigned work. It drives the Captain nuts.