Vacation is NOT Work Time

I’m taking two days off work to sew (wait, why I am blogging instead of sewing?) and to “use up” vacation time because my boss reminded me that working without an occasional break for vacation is unhealthy. Thus, my two “mental health” days are for me to stay away from the office and do anything except work.

So far, I’ve succeeded in that. My work computer is sitting in its bag in the closet and I’ve only used my blackberry once – to call my husband because he couldn’t find HIS blackberry. I did peek at the emails that had popped in overnight, but I did my best to ignore them. Vacation is a time to PLAY, not to WORK. If you take your work along while vacationing, then you aren’t actually on vacation, you’re working remotely.

Technically, one could state that I am “working” right now even though I’m not currently doing the work that my company pays me to do. That is, my job requires me to use a computer all day, so technically speaking I’m “working” rather than “playing”. Of course, the only way I could officially stay away from any computer all day would be for me to break out my antique Singer sewing machine (Model 60 made in 1949) and use that to sew. My Bernina 830e, Pfaff Creative Vision, and Janome 10001 are all “sewing computers” that can be connected to our home network or to other computers.

Also, if I were to avoid my home laptop, I wouldn’t be able to use my pattern drafting software to create and print out new patterns to sew nor would I be able to search through my 50,000+ embroidery designs to pick just the right ones for my latest projects. These are, of course, simply excuses. I have several patterns already printed, cut and waiting to be sewn.

A very wise person once defined a “good” vacation as one that was fun enough that you forget your passwords when you return to work and a “great” vacation as one that was fantastic enough that you forget where you work and what you do. I don’t think a 4-day weekend of sewing will get me to “great” vacation mode, but I did write my password on a post-it note that I pinned to my work bag just in case this short break turned out to be great.