This cartoon pretty much sums it up for me. I live to create and would do that happily without monetary compensation. I create and my primary medium is the web. In other words I code to live, not the other way round. This is one of the reasons why 90% of my tools are open source.
If I had admin access to all the servers in the world, I’d spend my time improving the web and fixing code. Writing code is my passion. Of course the reality of being a geek for hire means that I have to also manage expectations.