Moody Monday: The Reentry

The French refer to the end of a holiday, especially their massive summer break, as the reentry.  Returning to work, school - the day to day routine of work-a-day life. Today is my return to the office after a week of adventures in Iceland.  

I will need to work on my attitude and mood today.  Getting away from work is nice, but often means I come back all of last week's to do in addition to this week's work.   

I do have the end of this routine on the horizon, a goal in sight to move towards. And there is so much to do, to assure that the office is ready to move forward as I step aside.  I have had a dozen employers over the past 40-something years I have wished a couple of them failure after I left, and watched one slowly fade away, and only had one that kind of closed up from under me - they fired the staff, reorganized and failed, pulling out of the market within 6 months of the week the owner said, "I am not losing any more money on this venture."  Change will happen at the ABA, making them stronger into the future, I wish them well, and will do what I can to help them move boldly into the future. 

I was talking with a couple of people recently. One said she had never in her 40+ years of working, taken two weeks off.  Her idea of a break is to take a Friday and Monday off and be away from work for 4 days.  Another person said he maxed out on accruing vacation leave 8 months ago, and has not taken any time off.  There is something fundamentally wrong with a workforce where people don't spend time away from work. Where a person has never taken 2 or 3 continuous weeks off, and where the person working 20 feet from her has given up on earning vacation time because he can't find a way to take it.  

Time away recharges us, makes us stronger, makes us better at what we do for a living.  If I were in HR, I would insist that EVERYONE take at least one two week break every year.  I wish we had the European model of essentially shutting down for a month once a year. Shut down and send everyone home. 

No one is indispensable.  At my prior job, I asked to be promoted to an open position and was told, we can't promote you because no one can do what you do.  When I gave notice that I was leaving, they replaced me in less than two weeks, allowing me to train my replacement before I left.  The ugly truth is when someone dies on the job, the help wanted job opening is often published, before the obituary.  Don't buy the "this place can't exist without me myth", to work yourself to death.  If you won the lottery tonight, your employer would figure out how to get by without you.  

Take that time off, take all of it.  

And ease back into the reentry.