I’m very lucky that I get to work in an upstream focused open source job. But I also maintain a few small packages personally and those only get attention when there are contributions to review or I have a personal itch to scratch. I’ll leave enhancement requests in the trackers and just mark them as such and occasionally have a go at them if I feel the urge. No one not paying should expect anymore from maintainers.
I’m an August baby so was the youngest of my cohort going into uni and while I’ve done ok I do wonder if I’d have done a bit better academically if I hadn’t been so distracted by all the other things on offer to a independent 18 year old.