For a while, I took some time off, but I went to several shops and made them aware I was available for "consulting," and fill-in part-time work. It was a gold mine, because most shops only have one guy, and he/she can never take any time off because everything stops. Being an "on-call," fill in worked very well for me, as within the first month "off," I worked almost every day between 3 different shops. I'm back to employed full-time, but I still get calls and fill-in elsewhere as needed. My clients allow me to come in at my leisure, so I do a lot of my fill-in work after hours so I can still work my regular day job without issue.