So the travel was great for the first two years and then never being home started wear on me big time. It wasn’t so bad because I met my husband at work. We managed to either get sent to the same sites, or do office work remotely from the hotel room. But Automotive was stressful.
Switching to a larger company changed my life big time. Better benefits, more resources, less of the “we need all hands onsite, we can’t afford to let you stay home” emergencies.
That said I haven’t tried contract work, but I have known people who did really well with it. Taking a 6m contract and then having enough to take the rest of the year off. The contractors I worked with were always paid better than we were.
I played those too, as well as Math Detective! I loved them, but they were the only games we had (parents wanted us to exclusively play educational games).