I quit my job (working marketing for a tech firm) and then-career in very late 1999 without any parachute or soft landing zone. I just couldn't pedal lies for a living any longer and had to get out. I then spent a year burning through my (stock-option inflated) savings as I thought about what I could do instead.
In early 2001 I made my choice. I would sell almost everything I owned, I would burn all my career bridges behind me, and I would go to China to teach "for a year or two" and get in touch with half of my family roots. EVERYBODY thought I was crazy making that choice, and my mother in particular was frantic because she'd spent her youth trying to escape China.
I'm now in my 23rd year of my stay "for a year or two", 16 of which I spent teaching before stepping back into marketing for a firm run by a guy I love working for. (Officially on paper I'm his PA, but in reality I'm the de facto head of market research for our little consulting firm.)
That's two major career changes, one at age 36, and one at age 52, that I've made in my life after leaving school. And in that first one I not only left without a safety net, I'd also very carefully burned all my career options behind me just to make sure that I didn't get tempted to go back to working in Hell.
So congratulations! You did what I did, only with even MORE guts involved. Kudos!