Great stuff guys, thanks. And thanks for the suggestion of setting direction, bcpilot!

I have to say that if I were to pick an end goal right here and now, it would be Hawaiian. I have two good contacts there, one who made captain recently. Hawaii is where I'm originally from... but subconsciously I realize its foolish to set your sights on any one operator. Who knows if they will go under in 5 years? The guy who taught me to fly is there, secure now, but had to endure a 7-year (give or take) furlough. I was over there in the islands recently and went knockin' on doors handing resumes out, and made one good contact in the process who I'll call on again in a few months.

bcpilot, funny you mention the LOA... guess what I did last summer? I took 6 months off. It was the first time I'd not worked since I was 15 (never even had a summer off, always worked and took summer classes in college, even). It was glorious! Again hindsight 20/20, it would have been IDEAL to use that time to fly full time. There is a shot I could do it again though, one guy in my management chain flies (just your average hobby pilot), and he knows my aspirations and might support such a thing again.. we've talked about it.

Anyway I did use that time to firm up my decision. I had been doing the cubicle thing so long that I wanted to separate from it a while to be sure. It took a solid 2 months to get that life out of my head. I also moved my lifestyle around to mimic a flying job... mostly unintentionally (it just worked out that way). I spent better than half the time traveling on various trips. My wife came with on some trips, stayed home on others (She has a good job and can work from anywhere she can get online). I really do enjoy the lifestyle of going on a trip for 3, 4, 5 days even a week or two at a time and then having several days at home. 5 on 2 off in the desk-jockey world doesn't leave enough 'chunks' of free time to string together to have fun with the things I enjoy doing.

I also knocked things off the bucket list left and right. Anyway, I'm lucky I could pull that off. Now time to work hard and find a job.