Eighteen months without a job. Fourteen months. Twelve.

It's been a long, dry spell for many of the suit-clad Wall Streeters who were handed their pink slips before hardly anyone was talking recovery.

But sit down with a handful of ex-finance industry workers volunteering to work for free as interns in a city-sponsored retraining program, and they seem almost ... happy.

In the current economy, it's an uncommon reaction to the loss of a job. But for some finance workers, many of whom spent years working insane hours at high-pressure jobs _ often at the expense of more personal passions _ the sudden stop has offered a time to reflect and reconsider.

Thrust off the rat race treadmill, some are thinking hard about how and whether they want to get back on.

"It's really easy when you take that first job and you start building some work experience, to get stuck in a pattern," said Matt Gatto, a former Lehman Bros. investment manager.

Gatto, 35, called the 14 months he's been jobless "exciting" and "liberating."

After years of doing little more than work, the one-time philosophy major has taken over much of the childcare for his 2-year-old son. He's finished his MBA, gone back to the gym and learned how to cook. And he's decided that when he does head back to the office, he wants a professional life that's aligned with his personal values _ in the nonprofit world or in a company focused on social change.

Successful spouses, princely savings and lucrative severance packages have made this sort of self-exploration an attainable luxury for some laid-off finance sector employees.

For Agatha Melvin, the roughly 18 months she's been unemployed have offered the global-operations consultant a chance to look ahead.

Back when she was working 15-hour days, she had no clear vision of her future. In what she calls the "pressurized environment" of finance, she had little time to think at all. Now, after living off her savings for a year and a half, she says she has a renewed sense of what's important.

She may go back to working long days, but she'll be carefully considering whether the work is satisfying enough to be worth the hours she pours into it. This time, she'll be evaluating job offers on more than money.

After all, she says, "time is a commodity you can never get back."

Two decades after Arnold Chu made the transition from working in aerospace to applying his math skills to the world of finance, he is again planning for a transition after being laid off from his job as a manager last year. His year of unemployment has been a period of emotional highs and lows, he says, but he, too, has found it freeing.