I Am Enjoying A Six-Day Vacation!

This holiday has been weird -- in a good way, mostly.  Right now I am lounging in my bed, blog posting this and looking at porn.  I have one final day of working second shift Filing this afternoon.  But while I am sort-of anxious and sort-of sad that I have to go back to work, I am very, very grateful that I could sleep in this morning.  Yep, I woke up at a quarter to 9 after going to bed a bit past 2, but at least I didn't have to wake up at 6, like I would have had to if I were back in my normal schedule.

Holidays are great, and I will always appreciate them.  But three-day holidays where you get the Monday off instead of the Friday are weird in a good way because instead of dreading getting back to the grind Sunday night, you realize you have an extra day, and so your anxiety is alleviated.  I could be saying this, however, because I have taken a slew of Fridays off as part of paid time off, so I'm used to starting my supersized weekend early instead of extending it late.

(Aside: I got the feeling that yesterday, many people went back to work.  In case you don't know, companies are not mandated to give their employees holidays off.  We get Independence Day and all those other holidays off because companies agreed to it, and I think we've reached a point where people would not work for a company that doesn't customarily give the big holidays off.  Anyway, since the 4th of July fell on a Sunday, most people who did get the day off got Monday/yesterday off.  I know that happened.  I got yesterday/Monday off.  But I think that because the holiday happened over the weekend, well, some people thought it was time to get back to work.  I had been listening a lot to The Current's A-to-Z Weekend, and I think that with the exception of the morning show host, everybody else who would normally DJ on a Monday DJ'd yesterday/Monday.)

Beyond having three days off, my holiday weekend feels super-extended because I worked second shift Thursday and Friday and am working it today.  Beyond having the whole department to myself for most of my shift so I could really relax, not needing to plan on going to work from the moment you wake up is -- well, I won't say it's a good thing (the downside to getting to work at 3:30 is that sometimes you still go in tired because you need a nap in the afternoon), but it's a change in mentality.  And maybe even moreso this weekend because my three days working surrounded Independence Weekend.  I woke up Thursday morning (because my body is used to waking up in the morning), knew that I had several hours where I could just laze out ... and I sincerely, genuinely felt like my vacation already started!  I knew I had to go to work, but for most of my shifts no one was going to be there to tell me what to do, so in that sense, I didn't have to go to work!  Felt that same way Friday, and even though I know the reality, I feel the same way today.

(Another aside: I wish I had stayed up in conjunction with this six-day "vacation."  They say that you should keep the same schedule because it's best for your sleep, but if I had my way, I would go to bed at 5 and wake up at 1.  I was able to stay up, I think, till 4 on Sunday and yesterday/Monday, but I had to hit the hay around 2 at the others simply because I was so tired.  I feel bad about that; in particular, I wanted to stay up to see World News Now, especially for Thursday and Friday morning.  Beyond just being tired, I don't know why I couldn't stay up, and I truly feel bad about that.)

I am always sad about a good thing being over.  I should be glad that it happened.  And in the dying days of what I consider to be my vacation, I am trying to be grateful.