A holiday for no purpose

That title technically isn’t correct, I’ll be spending time with the family since Zara is off college and the kids don’t have (council) school and nursery. B will still be at his other nursery for 2.5 days.

I’ve long had trouble taking time off work. Not sick/specific holidays/etc but general “I’m going to take time off just to do nothing/spend time with the family/work on general house tasks.

So I did it, timed with the Spring holidays that the kids and Zara will have, I’m taking a full week off work!

Automattic has an “unlimited vacation policy”. People will immediately think “you can take as much time off whenever?!” Yes and no. Like any company, we need to ensure our colleagues aren’t left to shoulder too much burden so we check with the team in advance. “I’d like to take this time off, I’ve checked the AFK  spreadsheet and it is clear; any objections?”

We have an “AFK tool” internally which of course posts to the internal team P2 but also a generic AFK p2.
I realised I hadn’t actually entered this holiday after checking with the team so I posted it via our tool. With that, I hit a milestone there which shows how I’m privileged to be able to take the time off work I need.

(Automattitians have streaks available on their accounts, this isn’t generally available)

This isn’t 50 days, this is 50 times when I’ve entered a period of AFK, whether one day or almost just over 2 weeks.

When asked what New Year resolution I had in a team meeting in January I said I wanted to take more time off “just because”. Here’s hoping this is the start of many like this.