Work and vacation

There have been times when I really needed a vacation; work was highly stressful, I had about a zillion things up in the air, and I just really, really needed to not be at work for a few days. This past week wasn't one of those times. My company runs on a "use it or lose it" system with respect to paid time off, and I have to use up all the remaining vacation and personal time balances I have before the end of October, or they're gone. Okay, okay, twist my arm. I'll take a week off. It's been a nice week. I had a birthday and a few family celebrations that went with it, got some spending money as a result of several of those and have enjoyed spending it. It has been nice to be able to just go to bed whenever and get up when I felt like it.

All that said, I'm actually kind of glad to be heading back to work on Monday. Oh, the week has been fun and relaxing for certain, but I've gotten a bit of a sense of why retired people take part time jobs. A bit of responsibility can be good for getting one started in the morning and into the sack at a reasonable hour later that night. People sometimes say that we here in America have way too industrious of a society, and that we don't take time to relax. That can be true, but at the same time, with the plans the wife & I have (we're paying down our debt at a rapid pace so we can start saving for a house; we'd like to get into the housing market while prices are low) I don't have a huge reserve of cash to go traveling with. I also don't have the small army of friends some people have, so relaxing at home, while fun, gets boring. My job, on the other hand, really isn't bad. I have a very cut-and-dried set of responsibilities, clear benchmarks for success, and I work with and for good people. Going to work can be, and often is, a decent way to spend one's day. There is more to work than just soul-sucking toil. Work, as long as it isn't exploitative, is a good thing for the human spirit.