I'm sure that someone running around city as a pac-man have plenty of free time, job or no job
did you miss the part where he had been working on running every street during 17 years?
Eh, at least I had periods over the last 15 years where I had a lot of free time and could've done a lot of things I always wanted to do, but just about got some basic things done. Nothing of the scale of some of Tom's projects. He says he's not working on that stuff constantly, but still, he always eventually gets back to these things and finishes them. That's pretty impressive to me regardless of free time.
This is the difference for me. There are many things I could do, but far fewer it's worth spending my time on. If I didn't have to make bank the calculus would be very different.