> I started contracting instead, billing hourly

This is a huge struggle for me. I have difficulty estimating tasks I don't know how long it will take. Then I can't provide cost estimates to customers who want pricing on things they don't understand to begin with. If I am lucky to deal with technical people its ok but I find intense social pain and failure when it comes to getting these important details across to people with a financial interest in not understanding or negging me down.

I really wanted to make consulting a thing for a while but the pain of working with non-technical people makes it almost unbearable.