Why not do both? I got to work on things I really cared about and got to keep a high salaried job and all the perks that come with it (I quit on my terms, not theirs, once I had enough to retire).

My employer may not have cared about the things I worked on but that's fair game. After all they hired me and they were happy to have me there for years. I don't see the 'extreme' in what I did, more like common sense or self-optimization.