Pretty much. At one time I had this idea that I would become a professional writer. Now, I just write when I want, what I want, and occasionally send something away to see if there's any interest in it. My job keeps me in money, and I'd rather have this stay a hobby than become pressure, like you and Nik have talked about.
Similar to my other hobbies.
I mean, I could really knuckle down, but I'd need to give up a lot of my other hobbies because I would still need the job to keep going with the money while I wrote. And I don't want to do that either. And I'm not in my 20's and 30's any more, so I can't get by on four hours sleep every night like I did when I was writing/job/hobbies. And that was wrecking me, anyway.
So...yeah, I'm happier like this. When I retire, I'll probably write more. But never as a job.
If you can work less, that's always good...but it sounds like the second part of the plan didn't go so hot. Sorry, man.I lowered my hours at work drastically a couple months ago, and will probably coast on part time for a little while yet. At the same time, I fell back into the mind trap of "everything I make now must be done with the cynical eye towards monetizing it as much as possible." Meaning I need to be pumping and dumping schlock fiction for the Amazon algorithm, writing stuff I don't care about in the hope I scrape enough Kindle Unlimited page clicks to more than likely make almost half minimum wage at best.
Spoilers: turns out all that does is lock me in a miserable brain fog where I can't write anything at all. I'm just not that kind of a writer. Kudos to those who can play that market, I guess, but even the very few successes don't stay successful for long, for one reason or another.