It's been a week now since I quit my FT job and started my "sabbatical." I've been busy packing up my apartment, starting to learn a new language for travel abroad in a few months, and preparing for paid internship in the new semi-FIRE career (different than previous career). I'm also getting ready to run a half marathon next month, so the training takes time too. I'm going to start traveling in a couple of weeks to visit family and friends here in the US before going abroad.
We'll see how I feel this summer when I have to actually start showing up to my old job again (albeit PT), but so far at least, I still feel like semi-FIRE was a good decision. I like the idea of having something to retire to, so to speak, and I had already realized that my issue was less one of not wanting to work at all and more one of not wanting to work FT on somebody else's schedule. I also didn't love my previous career and was becoming burned out. Not to mention that financially, I feel more comfortable being semi-FIRE since this completely eliminates sequence of return risk (at this point I am intending to continue working PT for at least the next several years). In fact, I will even be able to continue saving more money over the next couple of years, albeit at nowhere near my former rate. Dealing with the health care insurance issue during the five months I'm not covered by employer health insurance has been a bit of a PITA, but not insurmountable.
Just wanted to keep this thread active, because I think semi-FIRE is an important and viable option, especially for the type A's among us. I'm also curious as to how other people who semi-FIRE are structuring their work schedules. It seems to me that there are basically two main options: work PT continuously, or work FT intermittently. My semi-FIRE appears to be taking more of the second approach, where I work FT for a while, take several months off, and then work FT for a while again. I imagine this will be somewhat field-dependent, with certain jobs lending themselves more easily to PT work versus intermittent FT work. But interested in what other people's experiences have been.