Well this is depressing.
I'm young (26 yo) with about 3 years of 1102 experience. I thought I was lucky to "fall" into a pseudo-internship that got my foot in the door. I chose contracting because it seemed to be a relatively stable career field with excellent promotion potential. It was this or the financial industry, and I chose the lesser of two evils. Vern Edwards lamented in a previous response about people choosing contracting for the promotion potential. I'm not sure what merits one should base their chosen career on but I'm not going to feel bad about sticking with contracting to obtain a higher salary and possible pension. I plan to hang around for a few more years to see if attrition works in my favor but I'm already burnt out.