[quickthrower2]

Firestri, it might be helpful to say where you are located in the world.

Anyway the options are see are:

Contracting - as you mentioned. If they are unsure enough that they make it a contract rather than permanent role, I see no ethical issue in quitting after the contract has finished. The question is then how do you explain this on your next contract. I'm not sure of the answer to that, but lets say you are flexible and say you can work anywhere in the world for work, you'll probably find some companies somewhere who desperately need resources and can't be fussy that someone has a sparkling resume full of 4 year stints in progressively more senior roles at brand name companies, and they'd be happy to take someone with more gaps in their resume than dutch cheese, because they need to get a problem solved quick.

Another option is to find a company that lets you have lots of career breaks. Probably want to work for a big company with the structure, processes and policies to support this. I reckon companies like Microsoft.

Another thing to consider if you can live frugally is a funded PhD and maybe you work on the PhD like crazy 8 months then take 4 months off, come back to it etc. Not sure how realistic that is but it's an idea.

If you can live frugally and be nomadic (or at least willing to avoid expensive cities) maybe freelancing remote would work for you. Earning $30/h but living in Vietnam for example, or even a very cheap part of the US sharing a room might be an options there. Once you get a reputation you might be able to get your earnings up to a normal job or even higher.

[firestri]

I'm in Canada. I don't think I could land a job at Microsoft or Google or the other big ones, I wouldn't pass the technical interview.

As for a PhD, don't you need a masters degree and a topic you feel strongly enough about to spend years dwelling on it? It's not that I don't know what to do with myself, but rather that I don't know how to live my life without playing the rat race.