10 comments

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  Writer's Coin

  10 months ago

  Ditto on this. Sometimes taking a day off like this to just enjoy the summer is a great idea. Just make sure you don't sleep in, stay at home and do nothing! Go out there and make it a day you'll remember.
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  plonkee

  10 months ago

  I take time off all the time. This year instead of selling some of my slowly accumulated extra leave days I decided to take them, and have 1 day a month dedicated to just catching up on home stuff and blogging.
  
  It's worked really well so far, but then I have 5 weeks standard vacation entitlement. European life is great.
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  guinness416

  10 months ago

  Some people are definitely baffled when one takes time off without going away .... I remember one boss asking what on earth my family at home do with six weeks vacation time a year. The answer, of course, was "all the things you pay contractors and babysitters and maintenance people and the neighbour's kid to do at home; and then they help family members do them too". But when you're stuck with a miserable ten or fifteen days a year, it's hard not to use it all to get away, no matter where you are on the middle-class net worth ladder; I understand that.
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  deepali

  10 months ago

  i get paid time off. :)
  
  actually, though, i do tend to work a few extra hours during the week, giving me a few extra hours (or a whole day) to take off without taking leave.
  
  for my side job, for which i get paid hourly, i deliberately cut off extra hours because you are right, 10 years from now, i'm not going to look back and wish i had gotten those extra $30...
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  ham

  10 months ago

  as a consultant i can relate to most of those things...especially taking time off for sanity's sake. im still trying to think about other alternate streams of income
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  bethh

  10 months ago

  You didn't explain the whole conversation, but I wonder if you missed his source of amazement? I didn't think it was about money - I thought his amazement was that you could NOT do your WORK for two days this week, and take time off soon - how can you possibly step away from work without it overwhelming you?
  
  I don't subscribe to this idea that work trumps all other desires and responsibilities, but I thought you were going to give tips about how to step away from work to take time off, paid or otherwise.
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  Steve @ bripblap

  10 months ago

  From the rest of the conversation it was pretty obvious he was amazed I was just walking away from money I could've easily earned.
  
  I'll probably write about ways to step away from work to take time off another time, but something one of my coworkers told me years ago in the midst of an 80 hour workweek, as he walked out the door at 5 pm, has always rung true: "we're not brain surgeons. Nobody's dead on the operating table tomorrow if we walk away from work tonight." At least as of 2008 taking vacation is still expected of employees - just do it. If you get fired for taking vacation, it's not the kind of company you'd be working at for the next 40 years anyway...
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  mjw2005

  10 months ago

  You are 150% correct.....
  
  Your comments make so much sense....and like you I see the same things around...mainly people buying $40,000 cars then complaining there broke and always have to go to work....me, I take 2 months of a year...and my co-workers wonder how I can do it.....well I don't buy a lot of stuff and live simply....
  
  Great oist
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  bubelah

  10 months ago

  Some people would rather buy things than go on vacations, take time off. That is what makes them happy. To each it's own, as long as they don't complain ;o)
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  asithi

  10 months ago

  Every spring and summer, I work overtime. Instead of getting paid for it, I take it as credit time. So once I am done with the rush at work, I take a week or two off and just bum around the house, going to the movies when everyone else is at work or sitting at the local Starbucks with my journal. That is the only way I can reasonably getting through it knowing that I have the time afterwards to just live life. My co-workers are often amaze that I would "waste my overtime" like this. But seriously, how many new TVs do a person need? My big boxy one works just fine.
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