Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
Off
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2013 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I am trying to take today off.
I spent two weeks in California, working all day and then often doing work-related socializing in the evenings, and came back on Saturday morning, after which I did a rather good impression of a cryogenically preserved extropian until Monday, when I got back to work(ing from home).
This morning I did a tiny bit of email for work until my partner reminded me that today is supposed to be your day off, and then read some scifi and had a late breakfast with my partner, and chatted with a stranger at the restaurant, then came home, had a work call that I'd forgotten to reschedule out of my day off, and did some urgent work-related communication. Then I read a bit and had a badly timed nap that left me groggy, then woke up in time for a volunteering-related call, which has just finished.
I know what real time off is like. It's waking up in a tiny town in England and walking several miles east to the next town on the Coast-to-Coast, without digital connectivity. It restores me. Today I did not succeed in getting that. If I had it to do over again, I think I would have taken Leonard's advice and left the house to read in a park instead of taking a nap. That would have been more restorative.
I tried to take today off. Turns out that's a harder goal to take on than I'd anticipated.
