Kind of a weird post, and I hope it doesn't come off as gloating. I'm in my mid-30's, spent most of my adult life in a corporate job, and this past year I started teaching. I honestly didn't really think much about summer vacation one way or another, but as it approached, I just kept thinking about how strange it would feel, that maybe I'd get bored, have some kind of existential crisis, etc.
But it's here, and it feels… natural. I don't feel bored, but I also don't feel elated. I just feel like I'm in a natural state. It's caused me to further reflect on the role that work plays in our lives.
I do think it's acceptable that we all play some role in keeping society functional (though I don't like how, under capitalism, it's exploitative at worst, subjugative at best). But what I don't think is acceptable is how ever-present it is in our lives. The PTO you get in a normal adult job simply isn't the same as a true, periodic absence of work. It's not. And it's not just about the quantity of time you get off–it's this idea of budgeting how you use your PTO, deciding if it's “worth it” for a given reason, and worst of all, just knowing that your job is still humming along in your absence and that you'll have to plug yourself back in when you return. It's just not the same as your job being “over” for some period of time.
Yeah, I've spent time this summer traveling and visiting friends and family, but I've also spent time not traveling. Sometimes I just wake up at home, maybe go for a run, lounge about, maybe see friends (or not), “waste” time, etc, then go to sleep. In short, I'm just… living.
As far as I'm concerned there's no reason this can't be the norm throughout most (all?) industries, other than capitalists' petulant insistence that we spend not 70%, not 90%, not 99%, but 100% of our lives serving to build their wealth. I mean seriously, they roughly doubled the percentage of the human population serving their needs over the past few decades by phasing out the notion of a single-income family. Summer vacation is the least we could get in return.