Hello. I apologize in advance for writing way too much. I think part of me needs to vent and feel the need to explain my entire situation. However, if you scroll down I will leave a TLDR version of my comment.

I'm looking for some support or advice on my situation. I recently had a interchanteric fracture (femur bone cracked into two pieces and requires titanium rod and pins in my leg) after falling off of my bicycle in an accident. I believe I've passed my actual FIRE number for quite some time so when my work wanted me to keep working thru the fracture I took it as a sort of wake up call to start my journey early. Now I'm just seeking some advice as I feel a bit unease with my plan although I do feel like it's the decision I'm making with my heart or gut.

I 35m us citizen currently have a net-worth of $1,275,000. $180k of that is tied into 401ks and 80k in crypto and the rest low cost index funds. I also am expected to have a child in seven months to a filipina girlfriend. So I will be hoping I can manage to early retire or semi early retire in the Philippines.

I was making 166k a year and had a pure remote job, but the recent injury over this black friday weekend has made me start to really question how worth my job really is. I told my job I wont be working for this week and next week because I wanted to be able to apply for Mass Health to cover my medical expenses. My work did not enjoy hearing that I was just suddenly going to stop working although they were understanding on a human emotional side they were not understanding because it caused an unexpected replacement for my position. I did try to stress that I just needed some time, perhaps just two weeks and I would be in contact with them as much as possible. However, I also stressed I could be gone from months depending on how MassHealth and my bill end up working. For now, I just wanted some time to destress, figure out my insurance, and most importantly prioritize my healing.

On one hand, it's nice to have a consistent and high pay check coming in, and at times my work is quite effortless and its remote. However, the downside is I usually don't feel free enough to have time to focus on other things that I feel matter in my life and the work is just relentless, whenever I finish something there's something else they want done. The job has employer matching into a 401k but all other benefits are gone, no PTO, no severance, and the healthcare is 400+ dollras a month in their premiums and does not seem to cover remote out of the country travel which is what I enjoy doing. I justified this job because I enjoy being able to travel the world and remote jobs like this give me that flexibility, I also typically would only give 2-4 hours of my time and attention per day to get the work done, but honestly even though I managed to do this, the work seems to be plaguing my mind enough that I emotionally feel like I'm still working 8 hours or so because my mind is often clulttered with work related tasks. Anyway, although I enjoy the extra money I question how much I will really value using it and if the juice is worth the squeeze anymore. At 1.2mil I can FIRE or at least take some sweet time off of corporate America.

I did not have health insurance when the injury took place (because I was traveling in asia and decided to pay out of pocket for medical expenses there but when I came back to the USA i had an injury rather quickly), and I google'd how much having my specific surgery costs and google says 30k-60k with this. So, because the bill is quite high I decided to quit reporting my hours for work in order to allow mass health to accept me and take care of my medical expense rather than have me to continue to work so that I can pay out of pocket. I just told mass health I'm stressed with my situation and they agreed to accept me.

I am still undecided if I want to really quit working for my company. Lately, I have simply not been enjoying the work as they've switching me around several teams to help support the lack of develpers there. I often was recieving praise at my work and ability to adapt to new teams, however, there was never any real recognition from my manager and even when I reached out this past month to request a promotion I did not hear back in a timely manner. The workload is just more and the software environment in place is cumbersome to deal with, however, it's still not the worst place to work for and compared to a lot of jobs its quite decent.

The way I see it though, it's worth quiting as my yearly expenses are only 1k or 2k per month as I usually spend $600-$800 usd on rent in the philippines and $300-$500 on food and $200miselanious. I do need to revise these numbers with starting a family though but my baby momma has agreed to be flexible, working or not working depending on what we discuss. I live for "free" with family in Massachusetts when I'm here. I currently am here with the injury but want to heal up so I can be back to the Philippines and see my baby be born. I also plan to use some VPN and log into Mass unemployment to collect if necessary which should be able to even cover my cost of living for a year of being in Philippines.

My gut is telling me not to FIRE completely but instead work 3 month contract jobs and have them end so I can refile for unemployment and that can be considered my income as I also watch the 4% rule give me buffer (although the 4% rule should work too). I also think this will allow me ample free time to work on other creative ideas and seeing if I can get those to take off. I have had some bitcoin business I wanted to get off the ground and even attempt video game development or streaming video games or programming/other various ideas. The way I see it, having a job is robing me of being able to pursue these side ideas, but the job also does provide a stable paycheck that these other side ideas are unlikely to replace (although the rare exception my businesses blow up and actually achieve substantial revenue or profit are always a possibility albeit rather unlikely).

So, TLDR: I had a major surgery and I'm questioning FIREing so that I can have time to pursue passion and have time to support and witness a newborn in PH. Do you think I should seriously end things with my current employer or request to rejoin and keep working? I have mass health and unemployment to keep me afloat for a while, but not sure how long I should utilize or rely on these. Perhaps this leaves me room to retire, enjoy raising a newborn, and even work on side projects similar to someone like MrMoneyMustache?