" I kept asking the same question but continuing to burn myself out while I considered what to do."
-This is exactly how I feel right now and fear I am headed towards blowing up at my current job because I am just so overstressed. I really like these people I work with and think I need some time away in order to salvage the relationships. Thank you so much for solid advice, you description is spot on to where I am at now and where I want to be.
Thank you for your reply, I could go 4-5 months without burning out too much of my savings and still be left with at least a 6 month run way. I'm beginning to think that taking time off and sharpening my skill set to things that peak my interest could have more value long term. It is an interesting proposition of weighing current opportunity cost vs potential down the road.
Thanks for the replies, I feel pretty confident. I have about 9 years experience now and 3 full years with Node.js. I've been doing some networking recently and there seems to be a lot of opportunities in my area. I feel like to take the next step, I would really like to take some time off and tighten up my skills, learn some react (I spent a year with Angular about a year ago) and some sys admin work to really round out my understanding of the full stack and get up to date with some of the latest and greatest. I can't do that currently working 10-12 hours a day.
Financially, I think I have enough saved to continue my current lifestyle for 4-5 months and still have an additional 4-5 months of savings, but I don't think I want to be off work that long, 2-3 months tops.
I'm glad to hear others have done it and haven't had issues explaining to potential employers. It seems like having this luxury would be the best way to land a new job because interviewing can be a full time job in and of itself. In the past when I've moved jobs, I haven't been very picky, I usually jumped for new opportunities as they arose when I wasn't really looking too hard.