Time to Take off your Shoes and Splash through the Puddles

When you learn that someone you love has cancer, it seems especially important to take each day one breath at a time. For the person affected, being in denial (just a little bit), makes it loom less.  You make your calls, get your second opinions, schedule your surgery... Most importantly, you repair your vacation plans.

Your gotta do what you gotta do, but you still need to have fun. I read recently that it takes 25 years of employment for the average American to earn the minimum amount of vacations days allotted to most Europeans.  In many other advanced countries, where there are statutory mandated minimum paid vacation days from 20 -29 days per year*, industry continues, commerce goes on, and the world does not come to an end.  This person I love, the one who Is planning her surgery, told me she is taking a month off.  In the over 40 years of her career, she has never taken a whole month off, not even for her honeymoon, which was 3 weeks.

I myself have never, purposefully, taken more than 2 weeks, just for vacation.  I've been unemployed for longer periods of time, but to take a month off, just for a vacation?  In the U.S. it's unheard of.  In my corporate job, I often worked 12 - 14 hour days, in anticipation of some future reward.  The reward never came, and when I returned from my 2 week vacation, I put in my notice. I learned during that vacation, that I was not cut out for that which I had gone deeply into debt to educate myself.  My job cashiering at the big box store?  I like it.  My painted furniture business that brings in about $200 a year?  I love it!

No matter how much you love your job, or your career, you still need vacations...time off to do traveling, fun things, or just nothing.  Don't wait to get cancer to take a month off, if you can.  

So I'm going to rearrange my vacation plans this summer.  I'm not going to try to cram it all in a two-week time frame either.  I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm going to get all my puddle splashing in somehow.

* I got most of this information from an article from epi.org: http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20050824/