[tigershen23]

Huh, that's interesting. I have the option of taking just 6 months off and then going to college in the Spring semester - is that what you would suggest doing?

If you don't mind me asking, do you think you could go into more detail about what made the first six months great and the next six not so much?

[bitshepherd]

If you need to take time, do. If you don't need to, don't. That's the most I can say on that matter. I didn't go to school in the traditional sense, so whatever makes sense for you makes sense.

What made the year off sort of a zero sum was that I had roughly enough cash to last roughly a year, but at about the halfway point I started looking for areas that I wanted to relocate to and worked on securing employment there. The stress of re-entering the workforce undid some of the decompression from leaving the corporate world in the first place.

It was a great period for figuring out just what I wanted to do and what really mattered in life. If I had to do it again, I'd have more FU money, or at least have a more solid income stream that wasn't wholly dependent on me being at an office for ~8 hours a day.

Lessons were learned, some easy, some hard. Plans are in action so that history won't repeat itself so closely next time I decide I need some time off.