A friend of mine was saying yesterday how she’s trying to use up her vacation time at work. Since leaving the company we were both at to the one she’s at now, she’s gone from burning through vacation days to forgetting to take them. I listened to her, completely baffled how anyone could forget to take vacation, when my husband pointed to me and said, “She doesn’t schedule any vacation time for herself.”
My God, he’s right. Our trip to England was his idea, and I had to fight back a lot of guilt and worry before I allowed myself to go for even a week. There’s something about a job you command, a business you run, that changes you. Things that seemed important to you in the regular 9-to-5 don’t even hit the radar anymore. Like giving just 8 hours a day and leaving that work behind when you push the chair away from the desk. Or taking sick days, or those vacation days. Yet put us in a regular job and we search long and hard for that 2-week vacation with a 3-week vacation within a few short years. We covet those sick days and personal days, and we’d NEVER work for a company that didn’t allow us time off on the weekends (unless we were required to be there and had time off during the week).
Are you prone to working through sick days and just not going anywhere? Sure, sometimes the cash isn’t there to take time off, but when it is, do you?
Next week … FINALLY. It only took me 10 years!
Amen, Kathy! It’s about time. I can say that because I just took time off. :))
The reason I freelance is so I get to choose when and where I want to travel.
Plus, I can write about everything, so it CAN count as a busman’s holiday, should I choose.
When the money’s there — I go.
Look at last spring — I had some cash and flew to Iceland for the weekend, just because I felt like it.