When my job ended this past February, I booked a ticket to Europe and spent the next four months in "mini apprenticeships" making cheese in France and the UK. I learned to milk goats and sheep, castrated pigs, sheared sheep, and improved my French markedly. There's a lot to be acquired by immersing yourself in a different culture for an extended period of time.
Before I'd left I'd received a lot of remarks claiming I was "sabotaging my career" (or something to that effect) by taking extended leaves to follow my passions. The way I look at it is that I'm doing these things while I'm young and still physically capable of doing it, at a time when I'm not prevented from doing them financially or because I have a family to support.
You could wait to start living the care-free dream when you're 65 and retired...but who knows if you'll even be around then?