Thank you for that writeup, I suspect you're right, that's probably why a few people are downvoting :)

You're not wrong though. It is a little crazy, I admit.

I have a decent bit of funds saved up to live off of, so I think I could do that for a while, and my company has offered to hire me back if I need (but likely without the aforementioned perks...). Worst case, I could take it and take the step down in comfort/lifestyle and go back to kind of what I'm doing today.

Earlier this year I had a medical disability thing that hit and put me out of work for almost 3 months due to stress related to my career.

I had to make a hard choice of trying to continue down this path I was on in B2B, where to get to where I'm at and maintain it is an easy 60+ hours a week plus a boatload of stress consuming my life.

In the end, I decided to try and follow my childhood dreams. The near death-ish experience has given me a new perspective on what is important and matters to me most in life, before I don't have any more time left to do it.

Truthfully, I might be able to ride out the remainder of my days no longer working, if I pull in just a little bit of supplemental income. I own my own home, and have a modest lifestyle with no children and live well below my means. I've been saving pretty hardcore for over a decade, and while it's not enough to live off of forever, it should cover me for a good while.

Even if this fails, I get a sabbatical from the job that's killing me, and some new experiences to throw on my resume.

I sincerely appreciate your concern and advice, and it is well taken. I just don't know how much longer I can even do my job today, every day is burnout day, I'm hanging in there until next year to get my bonuses and to ensure that my role's successor-ship plan goes through so my engineering team continues to thrive when I'm gone. I'm also not burning any bridges at work, and for the most part, I'm pretty well respected/liked there so I have no doubts I could come back if I needed in an emergency.

But for now, onward :) Going to give this game dev thing a try for realsies :)