This is what I've been doing since 2018. Day rates vary between 650-750. I guess I could go higher if I was putting more effort into looking but I normally pick organisations to contract for which are fun. I like working for small startups to medium sized businesses which are tech companies, and not companies with a tech department. Big companies often come with Outlook, MS Teams, JIRA, Azure, a lot of Scrum or similar BS and lots of hierarchy, meetings and politics which makes it really hard to have an impact or fun doing work. They can pay slightly more (maybe 800-1000/day) but personally I find smaller companies more satisfying. Smaller businesses don't have time for BS, so they optimise for success, use software and tools which really drive productivity. That often means MacBooks instead of Windows, AWS/GCP over Azure, Slack over Teams, Something super lightweight or just good team communication over JIRA and most importantly, development teams often get to really make an impact, drive decisions, get responsibility and own the entire software development lifecycle from planning to deploying to monitoring in true DevOps style (as opposed to sending emails to a "DevOps" team which is common in bigger companies). I enjoy myself more in these environments and for that I'm happy to sacrifice a bit of pay.

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.