Too Tired To Take Time Off
It’s summer. Why aren’t you on vacation?
Wanna be depressed (if you’re not already)? Check out the pithy little graphic* in this NYT’s Sunday Magazine piece by Walter Kirn comparing time off in the U.S. to time off in other developed countries.
Kirn’s entertaining premise is that Americans don’t vacation because our lives are already so great that we don’t need to. Cute, but…..huh?
Here’s Working Girl’s idea: Taking a vacation is just too much effort. In addition to needing to work doubly hard to get to the point where you can afford to be away, you have to plan a trip (reservations, tickets, packing, etc.) and then endure either the hassle of air travel (ugh) or the hassle of driving (ugh).
Let’s face it, traveling is work. On top of an already heavy load, it might feel easier to just skip it.
Also: A vacation not only requires time, money, and energy, it is too quickly forgotten. How often have you returned from a holiday and a week later someone asked, “So how was your trip?” and you can hardly remember having been gone?
Sigh.
No one will blame you if you just decide to stay at work this year.
*Comparing legally required vacation days in France (30), Sweden (25), Spain (22), Australia (20), Germany (20), the UK (20), Canada (10), Japan (10), and the U.S. (0). Yeah, that’s right, zero.
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Actually, the worst part of vacations was getting back. One of my former bosses always told me “Don’t worry about your work – it’ll all be here when you get back”. So true – gone for two weeks, get back, have two weeks of backlog work that must be done immediately since it is late, plus all the new stuff that must be done immediately, since it really should have been done while I was gone – gee, I must have been important! Anyway, when I extracted myself from the work force, I sure had a lot of backlogged vacation, for all the reasons you mentioned and that I just mentioned.
Am feeling your pain, Reader
I pretty much swore off vacations myself after this summer’s. We were packing/unpacking practically every other night (my daughter went through FOUR toothbrushes). That plus all the work getting ready for the vacation BEFORE, and then (yes) all the catch-up to do AFTER (climbing around piles of laundry, half-emptied suitcases in the middle of the living room floor, and what IS that funky smell coming out of one of the kitchen cupboards?) — There has got to be a better way.
I used to date a Frenchman. True to the cliché, he was very devoted to his vacations. After a ski weekend, from which I returned exhausted, I said something like, What a lot of work it is to go off on a trip like this. It’s easier to stay home!
And he said, But that would be a pity. (It sounds less stilted in French.)
I’ve long suspected he was right. Which makes me feel guilty but I still do find travel very tiring!
You’ve got an interesting twist and a good point here on a topic I posted about last week – I’ve edited that to add a link to you. Hope you don’t mind! But you’re right…and the “work” of a vacation is why I usually try to take off two extra days, one at the beginning and one at the end.
My idea of the ideal vacation would be to have a cleaning crew come through my house and leave it sparkling and shiny clean and organized, have a (very brave) volunteer come and wisk my children away for a week… take a week off of my job (hahahaha), and spend that week sitting lazily in the newly cleaned and super quiet home that I work so hard to pay for. The thought of packing for three kids, and myself, making travel arrangements and reservations (not to mention shelling out the money to pay for it all), and piling into the car to go some place that not everyone will be happy about (because we can’t all be happy at the same time, you know) just leaves me feeling exhausted… and don’t even get me started dwelling on all the work that isn’t getting done in my absence, or the very real liklihood that my cell would have 3,000 “urgent” messages waiting for me! UGH!! Someone should start a business that provides cleaning/babysitting services for the sole purpose of giving Mom and Dad a vacation in the comfort of their own home!
So well put, Breezybelle! A clean house, peace and quiet, nothing to do—-sounds like heaven!
Hello, Working Girl
I just returned from a vacation that included a night spent sleeping in a chair in the Detroit airport in what seemed to be the modern-day equivalent of a hobo jungle. The entire experience seemed somewhat surreal, especially when you consider that I was reading Jack Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums” at the time.
I spent all of the rest of my vacation reading because my back was entirely screwed up. To top it off, we returned to a kitchen that is in the throes of remodel hell. As a result, we are eating all things microwaveable.
All this complaining aside, I would take the same vacation all over again. I love vacations because of the adventure, I love airports because of the energy, and I love getting home again because our cat misses us when we’re gone.
Al