Instead of working 40 hours a week as a W2 employee you work as many hours as you want as a 1099 contractor. That could be 20 hours a week or 80 hours a week, it's your call.
But if you want to have semi-dependable income typically you'll be working pretty long term on-going contracts. That's cases where you might be working 10 hours a week for company A and 15 hours a week for company B for 6+ months or even years. If you drop off the face of the Earth for a month without warning chances are you're going to leave your clients wondering what's going on. That's an illusion of freedom because you still need to let them know you won't be available as often as usual and you'll likely adjust your desired time off to ensure you can fulfil your contract requirements.
There's other forms of freedom tho, like being able to say no which is really nice to be able to do. If some type of contract doesn't fit what you want to do you can say no and find work on something else.