Thanks everyone for providing your thoughts and comments.
The past 6 months have been an interesting time. After the initial shock of being laid off I went into job search mode and that has been a portion of most days ever since. At the same time, I have continued with my regular exercise routine and frankly - decompressed from working. I am sleeping better and find much less stress in my life. I have tried to appreciate the free time and the ability to do things when I want, not before or after work - like before.
I have also spent much more time thinking about FIRE and it's implications for me. While I can intellectually understand that I am able to FIRE, I am still scared by the thought. As I have mentioned previously, I feel that I have been conditioned to work for many more years (societal expectations). I am concerned that I am finding it hard to overcome this barrier.
The contracting job is beginning to hold more appeal as I think it would provide more flexibility and have some weeks with much less work (maybe 10-15 hours). Maybe I could use this time to really get my head wrapped around truly committing to FIRE.
Again, while I can understand that my financial situation is strong - I am still scared to death of FIRE turning out to be some massive mistake.
I am not remotely worried that you are finding it hard to overcome decades of conditioning. What worries me is that you're trying to "overcome" this conditioning by
doing exactly what you have been conditioned to do, instead of taking the time and space you need to figure out if that is really the right path for you. It's like saying you know you need to get off heroin, while spending every single day since your dealer got arrested looking for a new source -- and now that you've found one, you're rationalizing that the best way to figure out how to kick the habit is to start to use again -- but just a little this time (of course).
You have admitted that your mindset is warped by decades of conditioning. So trust the evidence of your eyes, not what your brain tells you about it. From what you've said, it looks from here like since the layoff, you are doing better by
every single metric that you listed. Exercise, check; sleep, check; stress, check. And yet the idea of continuing to live that way is so horrible that you need to run right back to more stress and worse health, simply because it is comfortable and familiar? You're acting like a rat desperate for a new maze.
If it were up to me, I would say to take a
real sabbatical for at least another 3 months (preferably 6), where you are precluded from looking for any kind of paid employment. Volunteer, get involved in your community, take up hobbies, whatever; just focus your effort on figuring out what
you want to do with the rest of your life, free of the confines of needing to make money. Maybe the answer is to go back to a paid job -- could be. But you cannot possibly know that yet, because you haven't done the work yet. Because you
cannot do the work of figuring out what FIRE looks like when you're spending most of your energy trying to avoid it; it's like trying to live in two worlds at once, which prevents you from bringing your full energy and focus to bear on either of them. You need to take the leap completely, at least for a short period of time, so you can understand how it feels when the cord is actually, fully cut; that will put you in a place where you can really start to think about the larger issues.
Tl;dr: the continuing focus on paid work (immediate job search, two new offers) is a crutch that allows you to avoid facing what you are scared of. The biggest favor you can do yourself is to ditch the crutch, face the fear head-on, and then decide what you really want to do once your head is clear.