Do fun projects of your choosing vs the grind of corporate life.

The former has a rather large non-pecuniary component of total compensation.

Exactly; especially in terms of stress—which is a major problem with my chronic illness, and both the main reason I'm happy to be away from a W-2, but also the thing that makes me most nervous as I'm dependent on marketplace healthcare (which is quite expensive for much worse benefits), and it's harder to get things like life/disability insurance as an independent.