If you hate your job, don't just accept "this is how the industry is". Look around a bit and you might find a corner of it that's more to your liking.
Of course, some of the nicer parts are "by invitation only". Once you've proven yourself to the right people, you might get invited to work on the saner and more fun projects.
I'm still kind of a workaholic, but I could do way less and it'd be fine. It's also super nice to have a safety net of more and more remote jobs now. Even if the whole economy melts down, people somewhere in the world will still need software built and maintained remotely.
Remote work is so much closer to feeling like it's not a job than office work, which is a huge deal for me.
And you can move to a lower cost of living area, avoid state income taxes, and still have a competitive salary to your city-dwelling peers.
I honestly don't know why everyone isn't remote.
Obviously making people travel half way around the country to sit in different offices (in the same building) somehow makes sense to management ...
I'm assuming this is because you have built up a good contact list? Because as I understand, a lot of time spent in consulting is finding clients.
And it could even get easier. I could do 20 hours a week of consulting work and still get by. I don't think I'd want to do that, but I could.
I don't know where you live or what area you work in, but I think the thing you want actually is achievable, maybe with a pay cut, or maybe not even. The fact that you're having to learn to use Rust because it's all the sudden getting used on projects says to me that you're working at some place where people put way too much of themselves into work.