I've found it to be very hard. Very, very hard. It got to the point for me where my "creative projects" took over and started to become what I spent most of my mental energy on, so a fulltime job became extremely difficult. These days, I only work 10hrs a week doing independent contracting, which while it's not much time, it's been surprisingly exhausting considering the time crunches and other strange pressures that come with it.

That said, my "creative projects" are a pretty involved - two of them include FOIA lawsuits.