Vacation should be more like quitting.

A year ago today I published 52 Ways to Be the Boss of You, Your Mood, and Your Day. It’s filled with awesome ideas for feeling what I wanted to be true. I wanted to be the boss of me. And it’s not that arrogant to call the ideas awesome. I got most of them from other people.

Interestingly, by the time I published the book, I was my own boss. Since that day, I have been working freelance so my boss, technically, is me. Unfortunately, I have some problems with her. Specifically, she only has one client so it doesn’t feel like freelance. It feels like employment without the benefits of health insurance or paid time off.

Despite the latter, I had a long vacation recently—Kauai, Hawaii with the fam.

I didn’t have paid time off for it and still afforded it. That’s something I did well as the boss of me. However, I had a terrible time relaxing. That, I did not do well, and I was reminded of something I believe.

Vacation should be more like quitting. Work should happen in quarters or semesters like school. Or, there should be enough people on a team that when everyone is there, it’s kinda slow, if we’re being honest. Breezy and chill, like the bowling section in PE class. When someone goes on vacation, they’re fully covered. They don’t come back to a pile-up, and no one stresses that they’re gone.

I get to look at employment from a distance at the moment since I’m freelance. I had to pay for my own vacation days, but I didn’t have to ask for them. Isn’t it funny that we don’t have to get permission to leave a job forever, but we have to fill out a form with HR to spend a long weekend in Milwaukee? It’s weird. Employment is weird, and it doesn’t give us enough agency, and that’s why I gathered more than 52 ways to feel like I’m the boss of me even when I’m not.

Happy publication day to those ideas, and here’s to vacations that feel a little more like forever.