It's not about the projects and more so about the money and living costs and the instability in the world. I also have some expensive chronic diseases, which is problematic in the US.
I've thought about other options like part time contracting, though.
Health insurance that's tied to your employer is such a toxic pattern in the US, and it's so expensive to escape. I pay something like $550 a month because I'm not tied to a company and I'm young and healthy.
I have a few friends who have moved to a contracting model within the hardware world and haven't gone back to W2. I think they've had some issues with managing workloads, because they'll typically have multiple overlapping clients who have no awareness of each other, so occasionally I hear about someone being booked solid for a month or something like that when busy phases overlap. Balanced sometimes by 10 hour weeks.
I've thought about other options like part time contracting, though.