People used to work 12+ hour days, six days a week. Farmers still do, in some cases. It's all about expectations, really. There have been times in my life that

People used to work 12+ hour days, six days a week. Farmers still do, in some cases. It's all about expectations, really. There have been times in my life that I didn't use vacation because I didn't have enough money to take a vacation that I thought would be fun. In four years of medical residency (aka junior doctor), I think I took three weeks off? I could never take more than one week off at a time, or the month would not count toward my educational requirements. So, why take a week off to sit at the house doing nothing? I have a lot more time off now, as a fully qualified specialist, but I'm hostage to her schedule for trips, I have to pick my vacation weeks (and yes, I have to take a full week or nothing) a full year in advance, and COVID restrictions have well and truly fucked the kind of travel we did pre-2020. I had two weeks off in September, a reservation made a year before in the hopes that all of this would have been over by then, and I did little things around the house. Frankly, I would just as soon have been at work. The biggest benefit I got was sleeping in, which is nice, but I've been waking up at 5:30 for nearly twenty years, so "sleeping in" is 7 at the latest, and I usually don't make it that far.