[wordup] You Deserve A Month Off

[Adam Shand]

Sorry for the amount of mail today, but this is just too cool.  

The only comment I would make is I'm pretty sure the Aussies don't get 3
months off a year.

And yes, I have blown a margarita out my nose from laughing too hard,
and had a friend poor overproof whisky up my nose cause *he* was
laughing too hard.  Other then the novelty of the experience I really
don't recommend it. :)

Via: http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/16679
From: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/04/19/notes041902.DTL

You Deserve A Month Off
Our columnist returns from a modest hiatus, 
realizes we are all working way, way too much

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, April 19, 2002

I have a message. I have a revelation.

It is mild and harmless and wildly common-sensical and terribly obvious
on a hundred different levels and yet also revolutionary, and still we
ignore it and deny it and make a point to reject it, trammel it with our
macho American work boots and proudly jammed timecards and 12-hour
workdays and our bleary eyes and struggling relationships and rampant
heart attacks.

We all need more time off.

That's it. That's the revelation. Of course you agree. Of course you
love the idea. But of course, like any good American, you've had the
noxious Puritan work ethic pounded into your soul since you were
knee-high to a fetus, when your mother ordered you to quit lounging and
get busy and, you know, clean up your womb.

And following fast food and bad porn and the baffling incessant
regeneration of the Bush clan, this mad drive for more work is the great
American tragedy of our time. It is. That and sitcoms. And Meg Ryan.

We need more time off. A lot more time. Longer vacations. Extended
breaks. Chunks of contiguous time which you can roll around on the
tongue of your id and feel all swoony and blissed. When's the last time
you saw an unhappy Aussie? Exactly.

I have just returned from a six-week injury-induced hiatus, a shockingly
lengthy block of time by most American work standards and aside from the
mild pain and the recuperation and the lovely Vicodin/red-wine
cocktails, it was glorious and refreshing and soul-regenerating and
completely necessary. It prevents burnouts and ameliorates loathings and
lightens the spirit and lets the psyche breathe and I am now utterly
convinced that we are all idiots.

Or rather, the Europeans, with their regular, multi-month vacations, are
geniuses. And the Australians are super-geniuses. Three months per year,
paid. They pity us. They sip their Victoria Bitter and grin and make
their enviable plans to travel across Asia on a Vespa for the summer and
they look at us and shake their heads and say, Jesus with a brutal
mortgage payment and a weekly performance evaluation, we are just *so
sorry* you're an American.

You, with your paltry two weeks off per year and your mad dash for
niftier job titles, your drive drive drive and your leaving for work at
7 and getting home at 8, your desperate need to be defined by what you
do and your neglect of everything that's important in favor of deluxe
business cards and pleated pantsuits and lots of frequent flyer miles
heading to conventions at the Indianapolis Holiday Inn. That is so sad.

And they are so right.

No wonder we so love our Prozac. No wonder TV is our national anesthetic
balm. The few precious minutes we have outside of work, we just want to
drain, detach, unwind, go numb, de-stress, de-pollute. No wonder we know
next to nothing of either ourselves or the outside world. We never get
to spend any length of time there.

I cleaned my apartment. I purged. I dumped bagsful of stuff and emptied
closets and rearranged my space and took inventory and painted walls and
bought art and candles and wine.

I slept in. I forgot deadline pressure for the first time in years. I
haven't called in sick in a decade and haven't taken more than a week
off and here I was, loaded with time. It was bizarre, it was surreal, it
was... extraordinary.

I went to Hawaii. Swam with dolphins. Read magazines. Spawned profound
observations regarding sunsets and breaching humpback whales and
sunburns and didn't check email for days.

Our laws are wrong. Our ethic is wrong. Everyone wants longer vacations,
yet we feel guilty. How dare you take time off. How dare you enjoy other
aspects of life. What are you, a bohemian freak? Industrious and
dedicated work is good and necessary and admirable but too much of it is
dangerous and deadly and nothing but nothing will suck your anima dry
like excess toil and lack of self-exploration and adventure.

We are solid and dependable and harried. We have all the shiny expensive
goodies and all the appropriately excessive everything, the best in
thuggish SUVs and the finest gold nugget jewelry and the blandest
business parks and superlative freeways for our endless soul-draining
commutes and by God we are a noble bunch of American cogs, dying our
slow and fluorescent-lit, copy machine deaths with pride and fortitude.
Ouch.

The Puritans were fools. Good, diligent fools who were desperately
undersexed and humorless and badly dressed and who never downed a beer
bong in college or had sex standing up or laughed so hard they blasted
margaritas through their noses, but fools nonetheless. Why do we follow
their lead?

Moral salvation through hard work? As if. As if God sits there, slumped
in the holy Barcalounger, checking his books as you await entry. Did you
work lots of overtime? Kneel before your 401k? Ruin countless weekends
by trudging into the office on a Saturday to finish a PowerPoint
presentation in lieu of sleeping in or getting out of town or having
morning sex with the S.O. and then going to a cafe for a lovely
post-coital breakfast and laughing and staring longingly across the
table and discuss traveling to Tibet together? You did? Off to Hell with
you.

We should all have a month off, minimum, everyone, every full-time
employee everywhere in the country. Increased to six weeks after your
first year. Then up to two months. That would be just about right. Two
months. Maybe more. Think of what you could do.

Paint the house. Start your novel. Drive across the country. Finish that
Proust bio. Rethink your life. Read up on the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict and come up with a solution because apparently they all insist
on remaining pious violence-drunk hatemongers who regularly shame their
God. Fly to Bali. You know, do stuff.

So here's the message: Do your work, do it well, take pride and show up
on time and kick ass as much as possible. Then get the hell out. Leave
as often as you can. See things. Get some sun. This is the message. Hey,
even Shrub has reportedly spent over 40 percent of his current term on
"working" vacation. And he's got a big phony war to keep hyping and
everything.

--
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday
on SF Gate, and dammit, we¹re not giving him any more time off no matter
how much he pleads. He also writes the Morning Fix, a deeply skewed
daily e-mail column and newsletter. Subscribe at sfgate.com/newsletters.
sfgate.com/newsletters/ 

----
And of course if you made it this far your reward is kittens playing
music on the beach.

  http://www.rathergood.com/kittens/

Adam.