I know what you mean. I quit my job in 2022 and took four months off, and I realized three things:

1. I have so much more energy than I realized, because my career just drains the life out of me.

2. I never need to worry about wasting away in retirement, because I have so many interests and projects and many of them are not passive. I never had enough time during those four months, to the point that I wondered how I found any time at all when I worked a job as well!

3. I need to become debt-free again as quickly as possible. I had achieved that shortly before I took that time off (coming from an apartment, having previously owned and sold a home some years prior), but bought another house afterward. I decided one of my top priorities would be paying off my mortgage as quickly as possible so that I would never again feel anxiety about quitting a job without having another one lined up first, and therefore could never be owned again by a corporation.

This would change my entire relationship with work. Just seeing my continuous progress toward this goal energizes me.

The amount of safety I'll feel from knowing that I could survive on just $30,000 a year if absolutely necessary—enough to pay for my food, utilities, and property taxes—is enormous.