[itamarst]

In between consulting/freelancing, where you do small projects, and full time employment, there is the idea of longer term contracting, yes. Repeated 3-6 month contracts. There are specific job boards for this kind of thing, e.g. https://www.randstadusa.com/, and https://www.winterwyman.com/ in certain geographical areas.

I know someone who does this and loves it. His contract specifies how many hours he works, and he can even make overtime on some jobs.

The downside is that you do have to look for these more often, and you need to make sure you are actually getting paid more than enough to pay for extra taxes, health insurance, etc., plus the added of risk of not being able to find new one.

If you don't like full-time employment you have other options too: short-term consulting, negotiating shorter workweek at normal job, product creation. (For the last one, not having an idea is a plus! See https://stackingthebricks.com/).

I write about all of these paths and their tradeoffs in my book, The Programmer's Guide to a Sane Workweek: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/