Work Days Off vs. School Days Off

The energy and excitement kids have when they are out of school is amazing. Their true personalities arise- alive, excited, and fresh; the world is full of fun and possibilities.

Somehow, the excitement of a day off work is not what a day off school ever was. I guess it depends on what work you do. If you are like me, and current or past jobs had other people in different time zones or even countries (i.e. they don't have the day off) depend on work you do, or if big projects that transcend Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter or even Martin Luther King Day need to get moved down the playing field, the days off just aren’t as exciting. The Blackberry buzzes, phone rings, people need responses first thing in the morning after a holiday. All of it robs the abandonment of a day off work.

I don’t recall ever getting an E-mail from my teacher on Saturday afternoon informing me that something big came up and I need to put in some extra hours and also do the EVEN numbered problems 1-50 from page 238 in my math book- not just the odd ones. Didn’t have a professor call late Friday afternoon and let me know the deadline for the essay was moved up a few days to Monday at 9AM. When you have a day off from school- its just that. You know going in the total of what you need to have coming out, and if you are smart, you get it done at the end of the first day off. No worries.

As I enter the last few weeks of my current position, and only have a few things to wrap up- I am sensing a glimmer of that past joy. Yesterday I only had an hour or so of work. Today- none. This weekend, maybe a couple hours aimed at determining what I do next- so I can’t really chalk that up as work.

The agenda for today- a healthy breakfast of leftover chocolate silk pie, write up a few words for this here blog, hang out, turkey sandwich for lunch, head out with the family and buy a Christmas tree, set it up, dinner and bonfire with friends. I’m starting to get that tingly feeling again.