One of my friends really wanted me to take a position at his company so I interviewed and they offered me a 6mo contract. I gathered my self-confidence and asked for 35 hours/week, leave by 4 every day (for the kiddos), and a very high wage. So the best advice I have is: work your contacts. All my contracting jobs have come from people I previously worked with. I think getting enough of these on my resume will make the contracts come to me and so I will have to do zero work (like a website, networking, etc). Contracting is the best, though. Make your own hours, take off as much time as you want, etc. I don't know if I can ever go back to full time. The best thing is that the work is clearly defined so you don't have any down time. When the job is done, its done and you can work on something else. With full time jobs I always felt like I spent so much time looking busy at work because I had to put in my 40s/week.