This resonates loudly with me-- I'm almost 35 and have been out of the university 5 years now. On one hand, my wife paid her way though school and had a very

This resonates loudly with me-- I'm almost 35 and have been out of the university 5 years now. On one hand, my wife paid her way though school and had a very similar experience of working FT (or several part-time) jobs). It's only been since she graduated several years ago that (as a violin teacher) she's been able to schedule time into her life for things like vacations and the like. On the other hand, I spent 10 years in the university, switching from CS to philosophy, getting an MA in English, and leaving a PhD in Literature after a couple of chapters in my dissertation. In that process there is a tremendous pressure to be constantly working on your project, and I simply don't have that now that I have been doing freelance web development. Much as with my wife, the certainty of being able to find however much work I need has really allowed me to throttle back on feeling guilty when I'm not pushing forward on some project or other (or, perhaps, just allowed me to feel less guilt on pushing forward on non-remunerative projects like becoming a better musician or learning a new programming technique/technology without a direct short-term payoff). If I could add anything to the OP, it'd be this: taking a full time job that doesn't mark seasons or develop you into some new person isn't inevitable. IMO, your plan to seize new found free time is much more profitable than giving into the flow of "Wednesday just being Wednesday".