Take a break for a few months to recalibrate what you want from life. Tech will still be here when you’re ready again. Go travel, use your physical body to walk and hike and lift, have a couple of flings, go to a bar at noon, work a few temp jobs, apply minimalism in your life, learn about something you like, etc.
A variant of this advice, that avoids some of the pitfalls, is to take time off to do something structured and specific.
Personally, in between jobs a long time ago, I chose to walk the Henro Trail, an approximately 800-mile Buddhist pilgrimage trail in Shikoku, Japan. To make a long story short, it was the experience of a lifetime.
have you written about your walk anywhere? Would love to hear more
I haven't, but others have written about the same trip. There's lots of material online these days, I'm not really familiar with it but if you google "Shikoku henro pilgrimage", all the hits will be about the same trip I took.
There is a wonderful book, Japanese Pilgrimage by Oliver Statler. He goes into the history of the pilgrimage and of Kobo Daishi, the monk whose path the trail follows. He also discusses his own personal experience walking the trail.
As somebody who was traveling for 6 month in my young years, I can tell you, after arriving at home it just felt like i was a day away.
I thing, like another guy said, teaching might be a good way.
Also, "tech" is big. Maybe a job in industry automation might be something. You nod just see something on a screen, you can touch the result. I'm in this, it is also sometimes stressful, but also very interesting.
It's more like "don't lose the opportunity to make money in tech" because everything else without any other qualifications or schooling is not very lucrative. OP is looking for happiness though so any re-calibration will not bring any happiness but just make them able to hop back in the rat race.
This is not advice to just follow for anyone. For some people this may be right, but for others it can be dangerous and a disaster. (At least if there's any chance "months" turns into "years".)
If one is of verge of depression (or similar stuff) then removing routines in your life is in general not going to fix things, but make things worse.
A long vacation or unpaid leave, sure. But quitting work without a concrete plan to return and definite exit point feels dangerous. If one isn't in the right place mentally suddenly you are just stuck at home watching Netflix in a downward spiral, instead of all those exciting things you planned on doing but somehow don't end up doing.
I remember seeing a post from someone on HN that started in this place, then did quit work for a year. It seemed quite obvious reading about that journey that attempting a "reset" just made things worse.