School is one realm that retains a sense of seasonality with its long summer break and the shorter winter and spring breaks too. Working a regular degular 9-5, I miss that a lot. The corporate grind just kind of stretches before you with the occasional 1-2 week break here and there. This time of year especially it feels like we should be relaxing a bit, but the pace doesn’t let up.
My job used to offer sabbaticals but did away with that as it grew larger, and even then you were only eligible after 7 years of service for a 3-6 month paid break.
Yeah. That is probably one of those things older folks perceive as "entitlement" but it is kind of shocking how little you can get away from the grind, and how nobody prepares you for that. It really makes me wonder how Boomers thought about this when they were in their 20s and 30s - did it really seem easier and more natural for them, or have they forgotten what it was like?
I’m of two minds on the question, is it wrong to not have breaks from modern work, or is it wrong to want breaks from modern work?
On the one hand, maybe this is just my millennial higher expectations. If it is, is that so bad? We have so many efficient technologies to help us produce more and better goods and services. Should we not embrace that progress and want to enjoy the fruits of it in the form of more leisure?
On the other hand, most of our human history we would have been a necessarily seasonally working farmer. Harder work than my computer job for SURE, but with the built in lower intensity work of the winter. So how weird is it to want more ebb and flow with our work lives really.
I used to produce a home improvement TV show in New England. Our production calendar was very cyclical and was largely dictated by the local weather. We were pretty quiet in February and March because construction was relatively quiet then. It was a chance to read books, have extended coffee with interesting people, and visit other production companies in Boston to network. Summers were the busiest because the days were long and the weather was good. That downtime in the winter felt earned and was savored!
This is so true! Now, I agree with BOTH your dad, your mom, but you also, in part. But please tell your mom that you truly appreciate her insight on this (even if you have mixed feelings about it) while you still have her!!! I mean this in all seriousness.
I think we maybe hit a sweet spot in terms of our use of tech as an interface with the broader world during the period from about 2007-2012, but then all destructive (of tradition and community) heck began to break loose with our digitel realm. I gave up my smart phone for a flip phone and a tablet a few years back. The tablet has smart phone functions except for calls and has a bigger screen, but is less convenant. It is portable but NOT pocket sized, which is part of the point!
While I too am nostolgic for them, the good old days before the world wide web I wouldn't want to go back to, but only because for many of us including my family we were pretty disfunctional back then, too, with a limmited worldview and didn't have the agency or broader horizens many of us now have far more access too. But I would love it if we didn't have smart phones! I would love it if far more people simply choose not to use them, or just not use them nearly as much and there wasn't such pressure to.
If life was good back in say, the 1980's for many, and its constrants valuable, they were allso a trap and badly limmiting for many. They kept far too many of us ignorant and delussional and limmited in our thinking in ways that were destructive. And we had TV (and magazines and such) which was mostly passive and which many of us spent far too much of our time with. Yet there was definately a good side for us, too, that has been lost! In being more easily creative and noticing and truly savoring more of the little things more intensely, being fully in the moment. And I still try to do that now, but the experiance has changed, and not just because I am older now. And I would argue that the digital zombydom or just otherwise very limmited but largely online existance (and often addictive online behaviors for others) that have become increasingly widespread over the last decade is a lot more destructive then the old limmits ever were.
The old limmits after all were not distructive in and of themselves, -they were limmiting yes but also often impowering, and simply reflected fully the actual physical social structure and and culture and envoronment and family and our own choices that we each lived with. Now we can escape, or at least pretent do, and while we CAN and many of us often do use technology to genuinely expand our world including its physical aspects to change for the better (and this at least is a good thing) I would say that on average, and sadly much more often, we are not inclined to use it well!
School is one realm that retains a sense of seasonality with its long summer break and the shorter winter and spring breaks too. Working a regular degular 9-5, I miss that a lot. The corporate grind just kind of stretches before you with the occasional 1-2 week break here and there. This time of year especially it feels like we should be relaxing a bit, but the pace doesn’t let up.
My job used to offer sabbaticals but did away with that as it grew larger, and even then you were only eligible after 7 years of service for a 3-6 month paid break.
Yeah. That is probably one of those things older folks perceive as "entitlement" but it is kind of shocking how little you can get away from the grind, and how nobody prepares you for that. It really makes me wonder how Boomers thought about this when they were in their 20s and 30s - did it really seem easier and more natural for them, or have they forgotten what it was like?
I’m of two minds on the question, is it wrong to not have breaks from modern work, or is it wrong to want breaks from modern work?
On the one hand, maybe this is just my millennial higher expectations. If it is, is that so bad? We have so many efficient technologies to help us produce more and better goods and services. Should we not embrace that progress and want to enjoy the fruits of it in the form of more leisure?
On the other hand, most of our human history we would have been a necessarily seasonally working farmer. Harder work than my computer job for SURE, but with the built in lower intensity work of the winter. So how weird is it to want more ebb and flow with our work lives really.
I used to produce a home improvement TV show in New England. Our production calendar was very cyclical and was largely dictated by the local weather. We were pretty quiet in February and March because construction was relatively quiet then. It was a chance to read books, have extended coffee with interesting people, and visit other production companies in Boston to network. Summers were the busiest because the days were long and the weather was good. That downtime in the winter felt earned and was savored!
This is so true! Now, I agree with BOTH your dad, your mom, but you also, in part. But please tell your mom that you truly appreciate her insight on this (even if you have mixed feelings about it) while you still have her!!! I mean this in all seriousness.
I think we maybe hit a sweet spot in terms of our use of tech as an interface with the broader world during the period from about 2007-2012, but then all destructive (of tradition and community) heck began to break loose with our digitel realm. I gave up my smart phone for a flip phone and a tablet a few years back. The tablet has smart phone functions except for calls and has a bigger screen, but is less convenant. It is portable but NOT pocket sized, which is part of the point!
While I too am nostolgic for them, the good old days before the world wide web I wouldn't want to go back to, but only because for many of us including my family we were pretty disfunctional back then, too, with a limmited worldview and didn't have the agency or broader horizens many of us now have far more access too. But I would love it if we didn't have smart phones! I would love it if far more people simply choose not to use them, or just not use them nearly as much and there wasn't such pressure to.
If life was good back in say, the 1980's for many, and its constrants valuable, they were allso a trap and badly limmiting for many. They kept far too many of us ignorant and delussional and limmited in our thinking in ways that were destructive. And we had TV (and magazines and such) which was mostly passive and which many of us spent far too much of our time with. Yet there was definately a good side for us, too, that has been lost! In being more easily creative and noticing and truly savoring more of the little things more intensely, being fully in the moment. And I still try to do that now, but the experiance has changed, and not just because I am older now. And I would argue that the digital zombydom or just otherwise very limmited but largely online existance (and often addictive online behaviors for others) that have become increasingly widespread over the last decade is a lot more destructive then the old limmits ever were.
The old limmits after all were not distructive in and of themselves, -they were limmiting yes but also often impowering, and simply reflected fully the actual physical social structure and and culture and envoronment and family and our own choices that we each lived with. Now we can escape, or at least pretent do, and while we CAN and many of us often do use technology to genuinely expand our world including its physical aspects to change for the better (and this at least is a good thing) I would say that on average, and sadly much more often, we are not inclined to use it well!