Vacation Days

I'm sitting here on a day off, sipping my coffee and enjoying the dense fog from inside my house (and, thankfully, not from inside my car). I guess that's a good start to a vacation day, but I've realized that I will never fully "get" vacation days.

I was a college teacher for twenty-four years, and before that I was a student. I had wonderful, long breaks, but I never had a vacation day. Every year, I had a month in December/January, three months in the summer (even when I taught summer classes, I had more days off than on), and a week in the spring. The rhythms of my life were driven by my profession. Even when I had a part-time administrative appointment and had work to do during those times, I had plenty of down time. Now, to be fair, I always worked during those breaks. The difference was that it was unscheduled time when I could do my work from home and in my jammies rather than have to go be in front of a classroom or grade papers. (Trust me, the actual teaching is the smallest part of a teacher's job.) I frequently used this time to get caught up on real life things that had been set aside during very intense work seasons. The experience of the last two weeks of the semester and then final exam week is not for sissies.

When Wisconsin politics went crazy and my paycheck as a state employee was being affected, I began to contemplate what life would be like if I changed jobs. One of my biggest worries was how I would manage going from having good chunks of time each a year of unscheduled time to only two weeks.

I was very fortunate to find a job that was still in higher education and that gives a quite large amount of vacation time. Between my four weeks of vacation, the week we have off between Christmas and New Year's, and the various holidays throughout the year, it amounts to just over six weeks. Last year, I ended up losing half my vacation days because I didn't use them.

My colleagues would be puzzled when I would say I didn't know how to think in terms of vacation days, that it was outside my experience--but that's what it was. I can tell when I need a day off for mental health recuperation or for a personal issue that needs to be attended to--but I'm not especially good at taking them. My institution is full of one-person departments, and although I have staff who can pick up certain responsibilities while I'm gone, there is much that only I do--so when I take a day off, I usually have to make special arrangements for getting certain tasks done. Today was a no-brainer. We have no classes today, and very few students will be around--so today I not only have a day off, I also didn't have to do much advance preparation for being away today. I feel giddy!

When I was teaching, I would usually have one or two days during the year when I called in sick when I needed a mental health day. For me, stress manifests itself physically, so it wasn't far from the truth--but I always felt guilty about doing this. I would  email my students to let them know class was canceled, but many of them would show up for class anyway. And it meant that I wasn't available in my office for them to talk to, either. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Taking a day off was something that was guilt-ridden and therefore not particularly pleasurable for me.

I'm worried that I won't use all my vacation days again this year. Our financial situation doesn't allow us to take an actual vacation, or even to take a day off and go anywhere local that charges admission. I need to learn to attend to my self and know that it's okay to just be home and do nothing. Taking a day to recharge--even in the middle of the week--is not only okay, it's expected. Two weeks ago, I was talking with my supervisor about a couple stresses I was feeling at work, and she very gently said, "You know, it's okay for you to take time for yourself." Oh, yeah, I guess I can do that. I forgot.

So here I am, home when many of my colleagues are at work, having a completely guilt-free day off. Maybe I'll get used to it some day, but twenty-four years of a habit is going to take me a while to break.