Interesting topic.
For me music is more like a break from real world. I unfortunately don't have a job I like. I'm not complaining $$ wise but still that isn't something that I enjoy doing so when I get home, play with my kid (very often my 3 year old daughter brings her Korgmicro X to me and asks for a mic so she can sing to the patches and that's quality time
), help my wife, do whatever I have to do and then after all day just put my headphones on and build some sounds on the TI or just listen to old vinyls looking for samples and etc. Few hours per week if I'm lucky but they are mine. I don't give a crap if I'll ever release any of the stuff I do it but I will surely keep doing it. Not for others but for that quality time I have doing it.
In my opinion anybody that starts to work under pressure will in most cases fail in the long run or music will become 'another job/hobby' cause of the stress related to it and not enough entertainement.
As for gear... In Future Music (not sure which issue) one guy stated something like this. '...the more gear I had the more time I was spending setting/tweaking it all up just to realise that in the end I was making less music than before when I had just one synth...'
It's so true.
I only have a Virus B and Virus TI, Gigastudio for natural sounds and MPC for beats and cuts and honestly I'm not looking into expanding my setup anytime soon. There is simply no need to. creativity is what makes the difference. just my .02
PS hope you all understand what I just wrote lol as my English isn't very good.