Sometimes doing commissioned work can be a lot of fun. Zekey and I are doing 6 Weebl and Bob film parodies featuring Cadbury Creme Eggs and we've just had the 3rd one signed off so I'm relaxing a bit and can think for a moment without freaking out at the amount of work we've got ahead.
The good thing about doing jobs like this is having to work with certain ground rules. This may seem the opposite of fun but it forces you to spend a lot more time thinking about what you're doing and I think it's helping me become a better writer. All good experience for later on.
Being paid to do something also seems to have a psychological effect on you as well. I've found myself putting a lot more care into the sound design and music on these than I would normally and while I'm talking about the music, trying to make something in the style of the films we're doing is a great musical skills workout. I'm definitely going to make the soundtrack for the 3rd film available for download.
The other obvious benefit is that we can afford to keep paying people like Zekey, Peabo and Sexual Lobster to make animations for us, for a while. This makes me happy as they are all good people and deserve to be paid for what they do.
Uderen
Well, you are spending a lot of your time doing something that takes skill, so being paid makes sense.