The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
I Had My First Staycation And It Was Awesome
When it comes to taking off from work, it is something I rarely do, despite having some great benefits. I remember when I used to take off from work and that meant that no work equals no pay. You had to go to work in order to get paid. A sick day would render you with less money in your paycheck. It was awful, so I did my best never to get sick and developed the habit of very, very rarely taking off from work ever. I am what most would call a workaholic. I work so much that my boss has to remind me to take vacation time.
If I had to take off from work, I would normally still go, deal with the illness or whatever it was I was dealing with throughout the day, and then I would try to leave an hour early. Nowadays, I do work for a better company and a better job and with it comes something known as PTO, or Paid Time Off. I have worked a few other jobs before my current one where they offered PTO, but I never realized how great PTO really was. Imagine having to take a sick day or just needing a day off from work, and getting paid for it? Imagine taking a vacation for a week and getting paid for it. That is PTO.
It truly is amazing! With PTO, I have always thought that when I took off from work, I always needed to go somewhere, and I always did. I took off for a week to travel to Las Vegas, another week to drive up the coast of California, another week I spent in Texas. I even drove across the country to attend the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee. When I am off, I usually go somewhere, anywhere. I even took off to go see my mother for a week, and my father for the other week, who both live in separate states. However, plans were cancelled, and my supervisor urged me not to take my days back to work them.
While I did not panic, I always thought that staying home was boring and a “waste of a day”. I had no plans to do anything, but I had already taken these two days off! A Thursday and a Friday, giving me a full four-day weekend. What to do with myself!? Absolutely nothing.
This is exactly what I did on my first staycation. I woke up at noon. I did not go anywhere. I watched some television, ate some almond butter, spent some time on my laptop working on my side projects, and doing whatever else. I never left the house, except on Friday to go see a movie.
Yes, it was awesome. While I do love to travel any chance I can get, I definitely enjoyed my first staycation of doing nothing. I mean, I wish I had more to write and tell you about how eventful my staycation was, but seriously, there is not much more to tell! Honestly, it is the best thing ever! We pay $X amount for an apartment or house and yet, when reality sets in, we really do not spend a whole lot of time there.
Yes, you could count sleeping there as being there, but in a way, 8 to 9 hours is spent at work or traveling to work, leaving 15 hours to spend at home. If we count sleep as being there, yet not being there, account for about 6 to 8 hours of sleep, we literally just have about 5 to 8 hours of conscious time spent in our apartments or houses each day, yet somehow we are tricked into paying for it full-time, as if we are always there.
So to have a staycation and actually enjoy the comfort of our homes, I suppose it was not as bad as I thought it would be. There are some people who have staycations by choice and others who do not, but staycations are not necessarily bad at all. It is time to finally enjoy the home you pay full price for all month, the only time you get to really enjoy yourself, other than on the weekends, which you probably often spend running errands, or sleeping.
