Sadly, I've come to realize this is true. On a positive note, I've also come to realize that you can get enjoyment from gardening your projects.
I had a Facebook app which was basically working well, generating thousands a month. I thought it was on autopilot. But always stuff would go wrong. An ad network would start paying less after they realize I'm not trying the competition, so I have to try to negotiate. Facebook would change their API in seemingly compatible ways, but necessitate changes if you want to stay in the game. Disk space would run out. Increasing popularity would require optimizing stuff and so on and so on.
I had a Facebook app which was basically working well, generating thousands a month. I thought it was on autopilot. But always stuff would go wrong. An ad network would start paying less after they realize I'm not trying the competition, so I have to try to negotiate. Facebook would change their API in seemingly compatible ways, but necessitate changes if you want to stay in the game. Disk space would run out. Increasing popularity would require optimizing stuff and so on and so on.