Have you considered academia?
I know I'm not the only one.
And let me use this opportunity to pull out this gem I found once from my quotes file:
"What one wants is to be able to talk with a diverse club of smart
people, arrange to do short one-off research projects and
simulations, publish papers or capture intellectual property
quickly and easily, and move on to another
conversation. Quickly. Easily. For a living. Can’t do that in
industry. Can’t do that in the Academy. Yet in my experience,
scientists and engineers all want it. Maybe even a few
mathematicians and social scientists do, too."
-- Bill Tozier, Diverse themes observed at GECCO 2006Getting to a point where you control your own research and have financial stability for research that could span 3+ years with very little output (paper wise) is something comparatively few academics achieve. Even fewer of those who have, did so by conducting longer term research. Most academics I know are just trying to produce as many papers per year as they can and do whatever research in their field they can do, to do it.