Yup, same here. 10 years ago I left my job, threw away my crap, went off to Korea for a year to teach English. Brought some math and physics books I'd always wanted to understand, learned Korean, and bought a cheap bicycle and biked around southeast Asia after the year was over. After a few months of this I started hitting up old coworkers for job references, with the fallback of another English teaching stint (managed to find a new coding job). Some days were hard but I wouldn't give up that experience for anything.