I’ve officially been a bureaucrat long enough that the mythical “use or lose” annual leave is a thing.

Two years ago or so, my public sector seniority became such that I hit the top tier of vacation time earnings. Combine this with the fact that I’ve swapped positions in the “company” (and even swapped companies once) so many times in the last couple of years that I spent most of my time trying to figure out which way was up in the office and needed to be present, I haven’t been in a position to take all that much time off.

As such, I’ve built up a pretty good back log of “annual leave”, some of which will go *poof* if I don’t use it before the end of the calendar year.

Those of you reading here regularly will have perhaps noticed that this lack of “break time” has taken it’s toll on me in terms of stress and such; that wouldn’t be wrong. The fact that I’m in a position to lose this vacation time I’ve earned hasn’t helped the stress any, either.

In any case, I’ve managed to sort out my schedule (having a bit of autonomy to determine what my little corner of the agency does has helped a bit here) to allow for several extended breaks to close out the year. The first of those breaks was the back half of last week. It was a nice break. I didn’t do a hell of a lot besides take care of some appointments (I’m getting new glasses, yay!) and spend some time being idle. It was nice. I think I uncoiled some of the tension springs bit.

The nicest bit, though, when I got into the office on Monday morning, I found that nothing exploded during my absence. That was novel. I cleared the email backlog in less than an hour, and there were very few things in there that needed immediate pouncing upon.

Of course, also this past week, I spent a bit of headspace marking time for the rest of the year. When I lay it out, it’s actually pretty nice:

• This week: full week, calendar is pretty empty
• Thanksgiving week: two day week, three days off
• first two weeks of December: low impact test cycle
• rest of December: not working for three weeks. Such luxury!

My thoughts right now are to do my usual end-of-year thing (just for an extra week), and not plan on going anywhere unless we make a conscious decision to do so – the best Christmas gift I can give myself is to just let go of the stress of holiday obligations and not do something unless *we* feel like it. It’s worked really well the last couple of years, and I think it’s a tradition worth keeping.

And yeah, I’ll probably see Star Wars in there somewhere…