Contracting is glorified agency work... As long as you say yes, you will always find something to do.
Being Paye you know exactly where you are at (is what I meant by stability) 
I see what you mean. For me it's about stability in knowledge.
This is pretty much how I pitched the "Why do you want to move from a profitable career as a Freelancer, to a less profitable less tax efficient permie career..."
Over 12 years I've been allowed to do things that if they'd been looking for a permanent employee. They could take the risk, because 1 weeks notice, I'm available, and my CV is varied.
Things that I had to go and read up on and train myself in the evening, and transfer knowledge and hope it worked.
That's really stressful. This is where my imposter syndrome doesn't help, because whilst I sell myself as a Lean Six Sigma Expert, that expertise is really in high volume, high precision manufacturing, and I'm good at it because I know where and when I can take short cuts.
Suddenly in 2009 I'm apply lean principles to the refurbishment of Warrior Tanks, or to the Engineering Review System within an Aerospace company, or writting reports on the warranty claims of wind turbine high voltage electronics, or training 200 design engineers in Requirements Risk Analysis.
This job is in an industry I spent 15 years in, and on a walk around the factory it was possible to see "TIM WOOD" pissing himself laughing.
I'm going to teach them Chalk Circle Lean Assessment, as my first challenge.
https://www.allaboutlean.com/chalk-circle/http://theleanthinker.com/2007/07/09/the-chalk-circle/
