In a way, this is a good argument for contracting, as long as you do it right. If you know useful stuff, people will always offer you a bag of money to help th

In a way, this is a good argument for contracting, as long as you do it right. If you know useful stuff, people will always offer you a bag of money to help them out. It is extremely rare that you get the bag of money and you get to do exactly what your passion is. Heck, most of us just have some vague idea of what our passion is anyway. So it's always some sort of compromise. But with contracting, you should be looking at a fixed amount of time working, then a fixed amount of "downtime", then back to the market again. You should ask for enough money in the bag (or adjust your expenses) so that both the uptime and downtime is included in the payout. Otherwise you become a prisoner of your own lifestyle -- which is a godawful place to be.