LOL I get that - none of this has been "hard" work. More like expensive work.
I've been depositing and playing for about 10 years now... And I've yo-yo'd between playing 5 hours a week to over 100 a week. I have no idea how many thousands of hours I've put into EU at this point - it's gotta be at least 5,000. I've probably put in close to $8,000 into EU at this point too but I've never really kept track (too scared too lol).
At my peak I had managed to get my best crafting profession up to level 22 - 25 from natural skill gains (no chipping). Then I chipped most of it out in favor of just doing mining. With this big hooray I had chipped back in about 3k peds worth of crafting chips to max out success rate on the full QR BP. And ahs of now I'm back around having lvl 20 as my best crafting profession.
It's been a wild ride for sure. I'm so happy for everything and all the great people that have been part of my in-game life. Definitely glad I'm not a case of a noobie putting in $20 and hitting a massive 100k+ ATH their 3rd day in game. LOL