I'm also now one of the fortunate ones - self-employment has its advantages and disadvantages, but one of the reasons I pursued my current job aside from the fact that this is what I want to do as a profession was the flexibility it affords me. When I need to bust out at 3:00, well, I'm the boss so I do.
None of that helps the OP, however. Previously I worked a "real job," but was fortunate to have a fairly understanding boss and a job where 8-5 was the norm but not written in stone.
All of that takes me to my personal soap box which says that all but a few "customer-facing" jobs should have results-driven compensation rather than hours-driven compensation, but that's a discussion for an entirely different message board...
