I've always been interested in the idea of some variation of FIRE with a hobby job, Barista FIRE, downshifting, or a FU money-enabled pre-retirement career change. As attractive as these are as concepts I'd never really found a suitable job that clicked for me. Even though I've realistically been FI for over year, I'd been planning on working at least another few years before fat FIREing with an enormous travel budget (travel seems to be the last refuge of a potential FIREer who doesn't know how they're going to fill their time).
However, last month I went on an 18-day rafting trip in the Grand Canyon. Definitely not a mustachian vacation, but in this case, it prompted a huge step in my FIRE journey. The idea of becoming a river guide captured my imagination in a way that nothing else ever has.
Within a few days of getting off the river, I signed up for a month's worth of the river guide, medical, and rescue training that would cover the bases I'd need to start asking for entry-level jobs as an assistant guide. It's a hard business to break into and I may not make it, but I feel like I'd regret not giving it a try. If I don't make it as a river guide, in a couple of years I can either fully FIRE or look for a job in my previous field and have a really interesting story to tell when they ask about the gap in my resume in a job interview.
I proposed a leave of absence to my current employer to give this a shot, but they want to backfill my position and can't do that unless I actually quit. We agreed on a month off, unpaid, for me to do the training, followed by a few months of flexible work to transition, finish up a project, and do some planning so my replacement can hit the ground running on another big project.
Normally, I'm a fairly deliberate and risk-averse person, so to make such a radical change in a few short weeks has been a bit dizzying. I don't know if I've quite processed it yet.