Learning feels good. I keep seeing posts about “don't answer your phone when you're not on the clock.” It took reading several of them before it sank in for me. This week my whole team had basically called out sick, we work from home, and it's honestly just too easy to walk across the living room and go to work to cover when someone calls out.
Side note: My team is really awesome at giving out mental health days, bereavement time, sick time, I make zero complaints about that. My boss has even scheduled zoom meeting with each of us individually just to check in with us and make sure we are all doing ok. I recently lost 2 family members, and my metrics slid, he called me to make sure I was doing ok, and said my numbers will take care of themselves. I have a really great job. — this makes it even harder to say no if I get called in on a day off. If I hated my job, I would be like hell no, but I like my team so much, I can't say no.
This week, on my days off I went home to see my family, 3 hours away with no internet. I got a text on the day I would have left to come home anyway, but there was no way I'd make it in to work before we closed. The guilt I felt made me angry at myself. I need time with my family, that's why I went home, but instead I felt guilty for saying no. The next day we had a company wide meeting about learning to turn our DND on when we weren't working, which I found to be super ironic, but also gave me “permission” to do so, and I can't feel guilty if I don't know I was needed on a day off.
This week, I have Sunday and Monday off to spend romantic time with my SO. We are both using a vacation day. Out of respect for him, and for myself, I put my OOO responder on my email, and I turned my slack to push all texts off until I sign in on Tuesday. It was fucking liberating. I don't think I ever would have felt like I deserved this time off/like I was allowed to turn my work communication completely off. So, I want to say thank you to this group for drilling it into my head.