Left a stable job at 26 to travel: what made it recoverable, and what I would do differently

Fourteen months out, came back, employable. The parts that mattered were mostly decided before leaving.

• Leaving well is most of it. Notice, a proper handover, and staying in touch. Two of my later interviews came through people from that job, and one of them was the manager I resigned to.
• Keep one thread of the work alive. Small freelance pieces, an open-source contribution, anything with a date on it. It turns a fourteen-month gap into a period with entries in it, which is a different conversation.
• Ask about leave before resigning. I did not. Two people I know got several months unpaid and walked back into the same role.
• The number that mattered was not the travel budget, it was the landing fund. Coming home with nothing means taking the first offer, which is how a good decision turns into a bad job.
• Nobody asked about the gap in the way I feared. Two interviewers raised it, both briefly, and both moved on once there was an ordinary answer.

What I would do differently: go for less time with more money left over. The last three months added little and cost exactly the cushion I needed on return.