Best path to 1500 hours? CFI route vs flying my own plane while keeping my full-time job

I'm a 37 year old guy going for a career change. I’m sitting at 240 hours and trying to decide how to build time. I already own a Piper Warrior and I work a full-time job that pays about $150k/year. My weird work schedule gives me around 9 days off a month (weekdays) that I could dedicate to flying. That's not including weekends. I'd have weekends to do whatever I want. I'll be taking my commercial checkride in a few weeks. I've been paying as I go so far. No loans.

Option 1:
Do the traditional CFI → CFII route, get hired at a flight school (if I even can... I hear its not easy right now), and instruct full-time. Realistically I’d probably make around $25-30k/year for the next couple years while building time.

Option 2:
Skip instructing entirely and just fly myself around in my own airplane. If I keep my current job, I’d save roughly $240k over two years (based off the cost of $30,000 a year for gas) compared to quitting and becoming a CFI. I fly a lot of hard IFR since I'm in the Midwest. My math says I can do around 600 hours a year comfortably. This option seems better to me in terms of quality of life.

The dilemma:
I’ve heard that showing up to a regional interview with 1500 hours of “personal flying” instead of instruction time may be seen as less desirable. Some people say it’s a non-issue if the hours are high-quality XC/IFR time, others say airlines strongly prefer CFI experience.

Has anyone here actually gone the non-CFI route? For those who’ve interviewed at regionals, how much do they really care about where your hours came from?

Any insight would be awesome. I’m trying to make the smartest long-term decision without lighting a quarter-million dollars on fire if it doesn’t matter.