This seemed to be the most common factor that kept people slaving away in my little cross section of the nation's workforce. Many people had enough money to take years off. I only know of one who did. Leaves of absence are too often looked down on as a weakness, akin to a character flaw. I had written a paragraph here about wage slavery, but replaced it with this single sentence in memory of my distaste of said paragraph. There are great things that can come out of hard work. But when you're thinking about human lives or health in terms of $'s, reputation, or other metrics of assessing an irreducible value, it's time to take a step back, if you can at all (TRIGGERALERT:PUN) afford to. Glad to hear you have some options, though never enough, right? If we're being honest, life's pretty rough for me right now, though the choice to make it so was my own. If I had more time, I would certainly spend much of it here....reputations need to be kept.