I'm going to flip your statements, last first, first last.
The creative community in nyc is in a very tough spot right now, you didn't know this?
I hear conflicting opinions on this. I know a few who are claiming best year ever. I know several that are claiming worst year ever. As you know, I'm well connected into the magazine business, where things overall are terrible. Yet, funny thing is, it seems to be the ones that are trying to do "business as usual" that are having the big problems. The ones that are nimble, creative, and willing to try new things seem to be doing much better. I just had to chide my former boss for closing down one of his publications. They simply ran the same formula into the ground and refused to fly the plane any differently. Guess they were hoping the ground would move ;~).
But I have dozens of friends and colleagues who own creative businesses like me and they are super talented and smart and they are broke and scared and hardly have any work and have huge overhead, they all understand.
The key words there are "huge overhead." The tendency for everyone, individuals, business, government, you name it, is to build overhead when times are good. As the times turn bad, overhead needs to be the first thing to go. And "investment" is not "overhead".
If the 5DM2 didn't exist I would never have said anything. When that camera came out I got excited, then I got frustrated. Man it's tiring trying to explain this predicament.
I still don't understand these statements. You shoot MF/LF. You apparently have some Nikon lenses around, but that investment is not being used to bring in income. You want to bring in more (future) income. I still don't see why you didn't jump on a 5DII if it does everything you need. At worst case, you could use an adapter to use your Nikkors (and for video, that's not going to make much difference, as you'll be manually focusing them anyway). At best case you buy one or two key lenses for the Canon to supplement use of your Nikkors via adapter. Voila. You're doing what you want, doing it now, and are not spending that US$13k you don't have.
it has to do with me wanting to stay with their [Nikon] ergonomics and lenses
This is the way that businesses drive planes into the ground. They get into this "it has to be this way" philosophy and make their decisions based upon that. Meanwhile, more nimble types are jumping on the new thing and paving new ground, getting new clients, and building their business (gaining altitude).
I am creatively hurt mostly for not having it, I don't tie artistic pursuits to making money all the time
You're in the creative business. If you're creatively hurt, well, you're hurting your business long term. And yes, you don't always tie a creative pursuit to money initially, but any creative pursuit is an investment, and you make investments to build long term equity in something. Essentially, what you're doing is postponing opening up your creativity. I've never known that to be the right course of action.
I don't know why you think it's connected to ROI, it isn't at all.
If it isn't obvious by now, when I speak of ROI I'm not 100% referring to money. There is an advantage to an artist (creative person) to being early into new worlds. There is potentially a disadvantage to being late. That's why my first two words were "Risk Reward." You
have to take risks to get the biggest rewards.
If I were you, I'd give up on a couple of your so-called "requirements" and do something slightly different: buy a GH1 kit plus the 20mm f/1.7, maybe a Cosina 40mm f/1.4 with adapter. Yes, I know what you're saying: not high enough pixel count, not good enough high ISO. Play along with me for a moment. For US$2k or so, you'd be able to start shooting those "free experiments" you're currently putting off. So what if you have to say to your client "this isn't going to produce quite as many pixels as you ultimately want, but I'm doing this for free and you're going to find the results usable and rewarding." You just might find, as I did, that the GH1 does a better job of that video than you expect. And it's highly competent as a still camera up to ISO 800 (which is why you buy a couple of fast lenses--you'll need 'em in low light).
What you've done is set Nikon up as the excuse why you're not pursuing something. It'll be Nikon's fault if you never do this creative work that'll bring you more clients and money in the future. It's Nikon's fault that you're still waiting. Take your MF camera and point it at a mirror: it's the fault of the person behind the camera.
--
Thom Hogan
author, Complete Guides to Nikon bodies (21 and counting)
http://www.bythom.com 
