11 Comments

Read this after discovering I've been over-counting my time off by five days (misread some poorly worded HR doc *head slap*). So, needless to say, I'm jealous of this extended break you're giving yourself. Well earned!

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Playing some For Emma, Forever Ago today and wishing you a good break with your family. I hope you get a few "Bon Iver" moments for you too.

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Brilliant modeling and practicing what you suggest to others. And lovely, silky writing. It flows.

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founding

Enjoy the break! I love the idea of “taking a Bon Iver”. I will give you an attribution when I use that line.

Apropos of this post, as a people leader at a company with unlimited PTO I find one of my hardest things to do is make sure my team actually takes time off. I delete Slack (if it’s even on my phone at the moment), GMail, etc from my phone and ask that they do, too, when on vacation. Work can always wait.

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Hope your time away is replenishing in more ways than just for your productivity. As an academic, I had two yearlong sabbaticals at 75% pay. Those were golden years. I wrote two books and two of my children were conceived near the beginning of the year off and born near the end. The perk only comes along every seventh year, though, so it was a long stretch in between. I always thought that those sabbaticals might prepare me for retirement -- or for the shift away from academe that I've made more recently. But it really is different when you're defining that time for yourself, rather than getting "permission" from an employer.

By the way, if you ever need a guest post, I'd be happy to contribute something from my archive. Let me know at dolezaljosh@gmail.com

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Many blessings and benedictions on a restful break! I chortled when I ran across "parenting away game". Damn, that's good and painfully accurate.

As a secondary teacher, I have a month of summer "off" every year. And there's a lot of personal and cultural baggage that comes with these summer breaks. I have actually never handled any breaks well; your discussion here is making me step back and ask a more stubborn "Why?

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Damn.

Spain gets how many days off? Really what in the world happened to the American worker, we we hate ourselves so much. I chalk it up to racial division being stronger than working class unity, but I see that changing in my children's generation.

It is kinda a big dilemma for me, whether to charge ahead and publish content every day, or rest up and wait to recharge... think i'm just gonna keep shipping, so if you guy need another fatherhood blog to fill the void while the OG father blogger rests up, check out my blog philadelphia and raising seven children, and alaska offgrid, and bad life choices....

https://fatherofzoomers.substack.com/p/spiritual-alchemy?r=jejuu&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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Hard agree to the statement that "in the US, vacation hits different" and the idea of internalized capitalism. I'm grateful to work for an organization where I feel free/encouraged to actually take my time off, and managers say things like "We'll pick that back up whenever you're back in the office." On the other hand, I'm pretty much working all summer long :( is that my fault? is it the demands of the job? It gets difficult to tease it apart. I know for sure that if American culture normalized, incentivized and rewarded vacations, it would be a lot easier to figure out the difference.

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Enjoy the sabbatical, Kevin. I'm a huge believer in taking a Saegmeister. I do one every five years--and take the family with. One of the perks, indeed, of being you're own boss. That said, what resonated most is the importance of grandparent time with the kids. There's nobody who can spoil a child better--and let them enjoy their freedom--than a grandparent. They've learned through experience that our kids are much more resilient and self-sufficient than most parents (me, definitely including) give them credit for being.

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This: “But while the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, his second greatest trick was unlimited time off.“

But don’t forget #3: Making offices open plan.

Great piece. Enjoy the break!

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