Benjamin Hunnicutt, a historian and professor at the University of Iowa, argues leisure time has become "trivialized" while work has been "elevated to the modern religion," a way for people to define themselves and find meaning in their lives.
As a result, he says, time off can lead to a feeling of emptiness and boredom.
Surveys find that many Canadians - almost one in five - blame a lack of cash for not taking holidays.
Update: Chris Bailey bounced off this post with some wise words about fear. Also, I keep forgetting to link to this post from the Future of Work blog, pointing out the darker side of being self-employed, at least in the realm of vacation time:
"Those of us in business for ourselves, especially microbusinesses (the very small), find it really hard to take any time off at all. And when you do sneak in a Saturday off, or a long weekend, there's no guilt like the guilt of thinking about what you could be doing right then to generate cash, or build up inventory, or improve your personal infrastructure (like putting away all those old file folders, or organizing your PC files, or doing some research about the future)."
2 comments:
Wonder when the idea of sitting around the house for a week reading a book became out of vogue.
When people can't a holiday becasue these things are supposed to cost money...this is a sign that consumer culture has hastened the end times!
Agreed, Chris. There's something really disturbing about the reasons offered for why people aren't taking their holidays. I just shake my head in bewilderment, being one of those folks on the other side who regularly takes unpaid leave to supplement the paid vacation.
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