Hi, my name is Leticia. And I’m a workaholic.
I love my work so much that I would do it all the time. I have the kind of entrepreneurial brain that sees how to turn even your toe jam into product. My friends, who are often on the receiving end of my wild ideas about how to monetise even the grot on their desks, say things to me like: “You just can’t shut that entrepreneurial stuff off, can you?”
Nope. Nope, I cannot.
And yet, here I am, facing 4 weeks off work.
I’m terrified.
I’m anxious.
I want to spend my holidays building systems and fixing my information repositories.
But that’s not a holiday.
Surrounding me are loads of businesses that are shutting down for the bare minimum amount of time. They close down on 24 December, and reopen on 6 January.
Around me are friends, most of whom are also entrepreneurs, who are talking about coming back to the year before the 13th.
And then there’s me. Sitting in the corner with plans to leave client work from 4 pm today and not touch it again until 20 January.
It feels like the ultimate luxury.
It feels like the ultimate folly: If I have 4 weeks now, does that mean I’m not allowed any leave for the rest of the year? This is a real question now that I’m an employee of my company, and not just a sole trader. Accrual is a frankly terrible way to give staff holidays; they’re self-responsible. Give them a bank of time on 1 Jan every year and say “go nuts, responsibly”.
The fact that taking the time off to sit around, swim at the beach, visit people, and be a lady of goddamned leisure, is such a problem for me is a good indication that I need to learn how to do it.
Taking time off isn’t an easy thing to do, for someone like me.
Though, paradoxically, I have my Very Best Ideas when I’m not tethered to the daily grind.
As far as the entrepreneurial lifestyle goes, there is glory in working all the time. Working all the time builds businesses that go places and earn your company many higher versions of the six figures that mine earns. There is a brotherhood and a sisterhood in working until the last day and then going back as early as possible.
Sitting amongst a group of people chatting about their resumption dates, I felt like a traitor. How dare I take a full 4 weeks off like a rich person? How dare I leave my business to the Wilds of life, alone, in a state of shut down, for an entire month?
How very dare you, Leticia.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I also didn’t have weekends off and evenings off. What kind of luxury life do I live, to have regular hours, hobbies in the evenings and the weekends, and holidays?
There are no other employees. This concern is mostly just me.
Somehow it hasn’t been such a big deal for me in previous years. I never agonised about it to this extent before, and it makes me wonder if it’s because I’m so keen to improve the company’s performance after it’s had the best year it’s ever done.
Or, just maybe, the best year ever was because of the 4 weeks I took off last year.
In any case, work—like crack, like digital technology—is a drug.
And from 4 pm today I’m going into rehab. To ponder, to plan, to do the things that I need to do for my business on my side.
Wish me luck.