Life is too short to waste it in things you don't love. Remember jQuery brought you fame, not because you were chasing fame itself but because your love for jQuery and programming.
Love for what you do comes first, money is just a secondary effect.
Haha ehhh I think you're reading into this a bit too much. It is possible to love more than one thing - I love helping educate people and doing it at a scale that Khan Academy can provide. I also love building reusable JavaScript libraries. I also love building tools for Art Historians. They all shouldn't be to the exclusion of each other and, in fact, there's often overlap. Part of the fun in life is embracing that and trying to make the most of it!
It's vital to keep your nose in real problems if you're working on tools, otherwise it's easy to go off into the weeds.
Additionally, a substantial part of research/creating things is time not spent working on it. It's really similar to working out: the rest time is when the growth occurs, and the time at the gym provides the impetus.
Life is too short to waste it in things you don't love. Remember jQuery brought you fame, not because you were chasing fame itself but because your love for jQuery and programming.
Love for what you do comes first, money is just a secondary effect.