Quitting to travel. Looking for ideas

A lot of it is personal preference. I've gone places that several people told me they didn't enjoy only to find out I love it and vice versa. If i were you, I'd focus on either South America or SE Asia and take your time. I'd reccomend picking the one you think is the best fit for you and giving yourself a couple weeks in that side of the world to get a feel for if it's your vibe. If not, consider switching to the other. I'd skip Europe or Australia for this for two reasons. First is they're just going to be more expensive and put more of a constraint on you, but second their cultures are just so much closer to ours vs. SE Asia or S. America feel like different worlds which I think is what you want to experience for a time like this. 

SE Asia will be cheaper than South America. I've enjoyed both but prefer SE Asia. I think I've met more people that prefer SE Asia over S. America, but there are very strong cases for each one and plenty of people end of loving South America. For me, I enjoy SE Asia because the local cultures have a lot safer and happier feel to them to me and plus it's super cheap. However, I've also found that South America has more comparable forms of social interaction to US / Europe. By that I mean that if you know Spanish, you can have much more typical convos with the women and/or make groups of local friends that have get togethers that you can partake in. In my experience, much more difficult in SE Asia. I'm talking in generalities here so I'm not saying that it's 100% like this in SA and 0% in SE Asia or vice versa (applies to everything I'm saying, so no need for someone to tell me that I'm an idiot because the people in [insert SA city] are super friendly. I totally agree, both places have awesome people, I just find SE Asian cultures to be a lot softer and less intimidating and the cities to just be much safer in general.  I have no issue walking down any alley in Thailand at 3am by myself but you would never catch me doing that in Medellin or Buenos Aires), only that they lean in certain directions. In SE Asia for example, it's super easy to talk to any girl you find out but you'll hit a wall with their convos much earlier as you won't know their language and their English typically only goes so far. You'll be able to maintain a level of convo that is sufficient for partying together, but more difficult to go to lunch with someone and talk about more complicated things. I also find their culture to be so much different than ours that it's more difficult to form deeper friendships, versus I think you could much more easily maintain a nice groups of friends, girlfriends, etc. in S. America if you can speak Spanish (this is changing - there are plenty of people you can do this with in SE Asia too and a lot of the younger generation there does speak good English, but you won't get nearly as far from that point of view compared to speaking Spanish in SA. The younger generation in places like Bangkok are also starting to partake in much more western ways of partying - for example, harder techno used to be non-existent in Thailand but now there's like 10 different clubs per weekend that throw events full of both locals and foreigners). I'm not sure what you're looking for either, but in my experience someone from USA/Europe is looked at in much higher regard to the locals in SE Asia while those in SA care less. 

None of that really matters if you just want to stay in hostels and make friends with other backpackers. Both places have great environments for that too. I personally hate that form of travel and almost drives me nuts seeing groups of 10 - 20 white people from a hostel wearing tank tops and partying around these places while hardly interacting with the locals. I think it's way cooler to pick a couple places and hunker down. My pick for this would be Bangkok - for those who haven't been there recently, it's gotten a lot more cosmopolitan and full of young western people who work remotely and have nice condos, make friends with the locals but also other foreigners, etc. I'd use that as a base to live, party, mingle, make friends, etc and rent a condo there while taking 2 - 5 day trips to other SE locations such as the Thai islands, Chiang Mai, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Japan, etc. 

There's a ton of great youtube content on all of these places. I'd reccomend finding one of the YouTubers that matches your personality and watching their videos in different places to get a sense. For instance, some YouTubers are 25 - 35 year old guys that just film themselves going around partying, making friends, trying to pick up women, and just talking to random people throughout the day/night. Others are more focused on the backpacker style, and others are more focused on couple-travel or filming themselves going around eating or going on the typical excursions in each place.