Get a new job. You can get a contract job paying £500 a day quite easily in the UK. Do a 6 month contract, save up some runway, work on your own thing for a while, doing whatever interests you. Repeat.
I do consulting and 100/hour (EU/US/CA, not sure for the UK) is pretty average, and 5h/day is a reasonable number of billable hours in a day, assuming not too much time is wasted on sales (and sales can be a billable discovery phase instead, if the process delivers value for the client).
Anyhow, I am just coming back from a 5 month break and it's normal for me to take a few months off every year inbetween contracts. I never take a contract longer than 6 months, otherwise I can't take 1-2 months off at a time. Doesn't mean I never extend a contract after 6 months, but before I extend I communicate clearly that I would like to take some time off and then basically line up the continuation at the same place for when I come back.
The huge salaries in the US, make me think that the situation is different in the UK, in terms of the challenges to accomplish this.
I would like to know more about how to get started with this in the UK.
How to get started? My journey was what I think is quite common for a lot of contractors. First I started as a normal employee, worked in many different companies, large and small as a developer, junior, mid, senior, then with some management responsibilities. Eventually I became just really good at my job, not just programming, but also understanding how different sized businesses work, how the politics work, how hiring works, etc. and I just felt comfortable and confident that I could get into contracting.
Initially I got all my contracts via UK based agencies (the usual ones, Gravitas, OB, etc.) but then I figured out how to look for open roles directly, either by looking in the right places or through connections which I've built over the years. If you skip a recruitment agency then you can easily get the rates which I've listed, because that's what the agency takes when they tell you a rate of 500/550.
Where do you look for open roles directly? I haven’t managed to figure this out.