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.