Taking Time Out

One thing I’m ridiculously bad about doing is taking holidays. I should be better at it, but for a number of reasons I’m just not.

Part of it is that I regard time between contracts as a bit of a holiday. Slightly more stressful holidays (with repeated sending out of CVs etc., and potential interviews) but still, a break from the normality of work. I know it’s not a holiday as such, but in my head it counts.

When I’m in a contract, I’m getting paid on a day rate – which makes a week of holiday an expensive proposition. I know, I can sort out my time/money so I have ‘paid leave’, but it still jars in my head, that I’m not getting paid when I could/should be.

I know I should book breaks – even if it’s “just” when I know a contract is coming to an end, and booking a week or whatever before I start a new one (or even extend the current one) but it’s never a priority in my head, so I don’t bother booking them in.

Finally there’s my own mind-set and cynicism, telling me that I spend my time on my own anyway, and that a holiday would just be more of the same, so what’s the point?

I do plan to get out and do some more ‘holiday’ stuff this year, but sometimes those hurdles feel pretty challenging, almost insurmountable. We’ll just have to see how things work out, I guess.