Originally Posted by
sstorkel
While everyone here, who probably has an established career and a good job already, is telling you to "go for it" allow me to inject a dose of reality...
Of course, much depends on your chosen profession. In some fields, there's less need to "stay current" than in others, for example. Still, I think you'd find things much easier if you worked for a few years and established a reputation before you went on a long tour. That's the route I took...
That is also the route I've taken on a sequence of longer tours of 3 months, 12 months and 10 months. These trips were separated by a number of years of working and then taking a leave of absence for touring. In between, I worked hard to establish a reputation and contacts for the work I did, so that if I needed to come back to somewhere else I could do that.
I think it does depend on the field you are in. If you can show you are still "current", then I've also found that having the experience touring can be a positive in the interview process.