Less than an hour ago, I logged out of my work Slack and computer, and now I’m officially on a month-long paid sabbatical.

The company I work for is run by Europeans (specifically Hungarians), and they have some funny ideas about time off. I wrote before about taking off all the U.S. holidays now, something I’d never done before. And about the unlimited paid time off at work. About how the company has been known to yell at us if we don’t take enough time off.

Clearly, not American ideas or “values.”

It’s really kind of life-changing, having a company offer you “unlimited” paid time off and actually expecting you to use a lot of it. But it almost pales in comparison to a month of paid leave after only three years on the job (and every three years after).

So why do I feel so nervous about it?

Because I’ve been brainwashed by four decades in the U.S. workforce. Brainwashing that started when I got my first full-time job at the ripe old age of 17. Four decades of two weeks off a year, when I was lucky. Maybe a few national holidays. I had zero time off at my last company because I was a contractor. If I wanted to get paid, I had to work. Before that, I worked for a company for 12 years, and it was only in the last two years that they grudgingly gave me three weeks off every year.

The math for that 12-year job is depressing. 3,120 days of work and 182 days of vacation (not counting weekends). And that was a salaried position, so honestly, I could have worked 5 or 6 hours a day and wasted the rest of their time or come in late and left early. Like many salaried workers do. But I could never bring myself to do that. I wasn’t a saint, I worked on projects on company time sometimes. But that’s what you do when a company is exploiting you. You exploit them back.

I didn’t waste the appropriate amount of time because I’ve been brainwashed by this country’s bottomless requirement to work, work more, work harder, sacrifice, suffer, and then work some more to top it all off. It’s progress! How are you ever going to get ahead if you don’t grind?! I’ve always taken pride in my “work ethic,” but now I see it for what it is. A tool of oppression.

Well, I’m working on it. And I have this company to thank. Yes, it’s the same company that threatened to lay me off at the end of last year, but what’s a month of panic and terror among friends? So yeah, I’m working on it. Working on feeling comfortable taking the time. And I’m finding that I can drop the work ethic in the dustbin but still do great work without killing myself or sacrificing myself at the altar of the mighty Yankee dollar.

All in all, I’m taking 60 days off this year. But shouldn’t that be normal? Or shouldn’t the opposite be normal? Shouldn’t we work 60 days a year and have the rest of the time off? We’re here so briefly and waste so much of our precious existence working. If you’re lucky, you can do something you like for work, but it’s still work, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’ve been nervous in the weeks leading up to the sabbatical. Like, “Oh no, it’s almost here!” It’s the weirdest thing. I talked to a few work friends who have taken sabbaticals, and they each said they felt the same way. Guilty. Afraid that the company would discover they could get along without them. I mean, I was eligible for this sabbatical over ten months ago, and I’m only taking it now. That’s how weird it’s been.

Not MAGA weird, normal person weird.

Wait, am I a regular person? Has it come to that?

Ha.

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN