Heart and Mind

I Need a Vacation

Yeah, I know that's a cliché. We all need a vacation, don't we?

But I'm serious. I'm starting to burn out. It's been over a year since I took any time off. Well, I took one day off around Christmas, I think. And I took the day after Thanksgiving off. But that's pretty much it. I haven't taken multiple days off in over a year, and that's pretty typical of me.

You know why? Because taking days off is a pain in the ass. It's not even that my job is that demanding, but I do tend to manage my own affairs pretty much. So no one simply picks up my work when I'm gone. Oh, they'd be willing to do it, but the key word in that sentence was "simply." It's always an ordeal getting everyone up to speed so they can take care of my work; and even then it's just the bare minimum that has to get done, because these other folks have their own work to worry about. Add to that the rest of the ordeal: getting the time off, making sure it's a relatively good time, making sure other people don't already have the days scheduled to be off. What a pain.

I've got a lot of teachers in my life. Those teachers get edgy when you take shots at them for the 180-day work-year. And in some respects it's justified that they do, because a) it's the easy target that everyone aims at and b) those kids they teach really are a bunch of little shits that would probably do most of us non-teachers in. So I can respect, or can probably be concvinced by someone who argues well, that the time-off they get is almost necessary so they don't burn out. However...

What I always try to explain to the teachers I know is that it's not merely the fact that they get crazy amounts of vacation time. It's that their whole operation goes on vacation when they go on vacation. There's no work piling up on their desk while they're gone. They don't have to worry about who will cover for them. If it's summer or any of those week-long vacations they get, they didn't have to clear it with anyone, they didn't have to make sure it was approved, they didn't have to wonder whether people would secretly be disappointed that they're bailing at a time when they're needed.

That's not my world. As I'm wont to say, it's more difficult to take a vacation than it is to just drag my sorry ass to work, because if I want to take a week off, I stress twice as much the week before I leave and twice as much the week I get back as I try to catch up. Where's the leisure there? So it's no surprise that I don't take many vacations and that I almost never take a full week when I do take time off.

I'm in one of those modes, though, where I am burning out. And I have no desire to go to a tropical island or on a long plane ride. I want to just stay home and escape the grind. That's why I'm talking to the blog here at 3:45. I just flat out ran out of gas and need some air.

And I like my job. Imagine if I didn't.

posted by Steve @ 4:02 PM