Blasting off your vacation days

[shootingstar]

Guess this doesn't apply for those who are lucky enough to be retired.

But for those who still work, how do you make best use of your vacation days? For me, vacation days are precious. I usually try to do something special or different that normally I can't do because of regular work business days/schedule. Which means literally going out of town, dealing with a major event/activity in life (ie. moving to another home), spending time with dearie, etc.

I really don't want to use vacation days....for housecleaning. It makes no sense for someone like me who doesn't have children.

Righ now I'm bummed out abit that someone else keeps changing our meet-up time to go away on a short trip out of town to the mountains....I could have worked this morning...instead of wasting vacation time waiting for her. So did some ironing, stuff. Hmmm, yea. Vacation.

[TrekDianna]

I take two or three two week vacations per year. Last year for one of the vacations, we went to the jungle of Peru - no phones, no electricity, no hot water, it was fabulous. This winter we plan to go to Costa Rica and do the same sort of thing -- out in the middle of nowhere with as little contact with the outside as possible -- my partner is wildlife biologist - we actually do things like chase herds of peccaries to get a look at them -- and she thinks my MTB is dangerous :confused:

[NbyNW]

Sorry your friend flaked on you ... any reason you couldn't have gone in to work anyway? That's what I did one Christmas when my flight out of town got cancelled. There were no more flights out until after the holiday, so I just went in on a day that I was scheduled to be away and saved the vacation for later.

[Blueberry]

Righ now I'm bummed out abit that someone else keeps changing our meet-up time to go away on a short trip out of town to the mountains....I could have worked this morning...instead of wasting vacation time waiting for her. So did some ironing, stuff. Hmmm, yea. Vacation.

She chooses how to interact with you - you choose how to react to that. I presume she's your motorized transportation for the trip to the mountains and that you therefore had to wait? I have had some lovely days when plans changed and I couldn't necessarily make "better" use of my time. Knitting (my "art"), walking, brunch out, letters to old friends - lots of ways to use free time that don't involve "wasting" it.

[Koronin]

I don't get paid vacation days.

[Blueberry]

I don't get paid vacation days.

I haven't in a long time, and I could barely take them when I did....

[shootingstar]

No, we had already prearranged to meet at 10:00 am, then next day got changed to 11:00am. Then on the day of leaving, 12:00 pm with a need to drop stuff off to her sister. Yea, she had generously offered to drive me up to the mountains.

She is single, child-free and last few years works at home on flex schedule. Therefore has a tendency to be slack about timelines, etc. It drives her sister (the person that I'm close friends with) nuts. In fact, her sister ranted on how frustrating her siblings were (all in their 50's) about their unreliability of meet-up times to do stuff. Considering the fact, that she only sees them once a year when she visits from another province.

I come a very different family: my siblings do tend to be on time when we meet up to do stuff..it's because more, we don't see each other often! So time is precious to us. That includes siblings who live in the same city...only every few months.

However things worked out well later. But I'm never going to leave an open-ended vacation day like that with this particular woman, in terms of scheduling.

[eofelis]

I'm nearly 2 years into my first "real job" in a long long time. I spent several years in college eke-ing out a living with p/t jobs with no benefits. The job I have now offers 1 or 2 weeks of paid vacation, depending on how long you've been there. Maybe people that have been there a long time get more, I'm not sure. We also get 3 PTO days a year. Can use them as sick days or just paid days off. But the company has a culture of flexible time off (unpaid) beyond those days. I took my (first!) weeks paid vacation last month and went home to New England to visit my mom for a week. I will probably take some unpaid days off through the winter to go do other things. I've been thrifty and don't live paycheck to paycheck so I'm ok with unpaid time off.

[shootingstar]

I used to have a job with 9 hr. daily shifts, 5 days /wk. and 2 wks. vacation. Vacation really felt too short.

It's great, eofelis that you got a more "permanent" job.

[limewave]

What a bummer! It's so disappointing when stuff like that happens--feels like a complete waste of a vacation day!
I get 6 weeks of PTO a year. And working from home makes it really hard to use that time. I try to take days off but end up working for a couple of hours just 'cause its right here! DH only gets 2 weeks a year so we don't plan many vacations.

I still have 4 weeks left this year. Which would give me 10 weeks next year (it carries over). There's no way I could possibly use all that time. We are in a bit of a 'lull' right now so I'm taking a lot of afternoons off. I'm not doing much other than running errands and such. I wish I had the money to take a mini-trip--even so, I have responsibility of watching the kids so it would be difficult to go away for a few days.

[shootingstar]

Still, it might be worth inviting a good friend over or going somewhere for a coffee, even though your kids may have to be with you.