It can be. The beauty of Eve is you get to decide how to play the game, how much stress you want to take. You don't have to do it the way other one is. It's completely fine to mine in a Venture. The game is a fractal at every level of game play, the risks and rewards simply go up as you advance in the game and develop more ambitious personal goals.

You can decide what level to play at and grow as you like, as you get better.

It's with this approach that I'll probably always return to Eve, play it for a bit, stop and repeat.