The important stuff never pans out.

Many of my "important" projects have. Here are some differences between my examples and yours:

1. I didn't do my important projects under a boss.
2. I didn't try to publish papers, but instead just discussed my ideas on forums and mailing lists.
3. I never worked "twelve hours a day, 7 days a week" on a project unless I found the work itself fun. (During one of the project that I did mostly for financial reasons, I played WoW a lot, and it still worked out pretty well.)

You might want to try my approach, before giving up on "important stuff" altogether.