So starting in November in earnest one starts burning off unused paid time off.

Company we work for doesn’t carry forward vacation, sick or personal time. And we get 20 PTO days plus now 7 holidays and 2 floating holidays. I know it’s paltry when compared with say Germany or France but it’s time off.

And so I have no exhausted my sick time which I euphemistically call mental health days. And as of tomorrow Personal time will be used up. That leaves 40 hours of vacation to burn which I leave the office on the 22nd and return on the 3rd of January.

So in honor of my grandfathers death and my mom’s birth (Dec. 11th and Dec. 12 respectively) I’m taking Monday the 12th off work. It’s supposed to be snowy, rainy, and just generally nasty outside too. So a good day to take off from work.

And my paternal grandmother died on Christmas Day of 2005, so taking the week between Christmas and the New Year is sort of a requirement.

And how do I honor those ancestors, I sleep a lot. Just stretched out on the now well worn recliner I’ll have music playing, maybe reading and I’ll doze off for hour or so stretches. It’s very relaxing.

Some people have the theory that you go all over the place during time off, me I do some cooking, baking etc. and snooze to my liking and it’s the most effective way of treating workplace stresses. It’s funny even when I was a kid, my friends used to say that I raised sleep to an art form. And I mean sleep anywhere. I recall one camping trip in my early 20’s where I would fall asleep on the dock, the sound of lapping water and the call of Loons was enough I guess.

And now that we’re starting to understand the role of sleep in our lives, I guess I’m ahead of the curve in the ability to just snooze whenever I feel like it.