I am a highly paid consultant in cryptocurrency infrastructure systems, and I use my rates (both hourly and flat) to work less, not more. So sometimes I can ear

I am a highly paid consultant in cryptocurrency infrastructure systems, and I use my rates (both hourly and flat) to work less, not more. So sometimes I can earn a lot of money for a few hours of work, but it is not boring. It is stimulating and requires a lot of thinking, as I specialize in a particularly rare niche. Though it generates a lot of stress when there are no clients for long periods of time. For the rest of it, I work in the academia, where the money is nearly nonexistent, but it helps me for my freedom of self-actualization (and since it is computational epidemiology, there is suddenly a lot of real world relevance). Still, event when there are no clients for months, the money from the academia is enough to survive (barely).