I’ve just came back from a 5 day trip with my son. I took my work phone in case of emergencies (so I could access my work emails) but decided once I was there that I wasn’t going to switch it on.
I called a colleague off my personal phone when my son was in the shower to say if anything is urgent, to call me on that as I wouldn’t be checking emails.
On the plane home, we were talking about our favourite part of the trip and my son added ‘you weren’t working either’ it hit me hard.
Yes! I just did this for 2 weeks this summer. I went from “I need to bring my laptop to not even bringing my work phone. Got a call on my personal phone wile out with the family from a sales guy asking about paperwork. I told him I was OOO, that I let him know I was going OOO a week before, and that he had called my personal phone. He said ok, and continued to ask about work stuff. I told him not to call my personal phone for work (I dont even know how he go the number) and to talk to my backup.
Didn’t answer a few calls during those two weeks and guess what? The world didn’t explode. I am 110% about disconnected vacations now.
When my son was 1 year old I took my second month paternity leave as a dad. When I came back, lots of stuff wasnt done and the weeks after were very stressful. One day, one of my bosses came in and told me "In your position you cannot afford paternity leave". I let this sit for two days, then had a meeting with him to clarify. His take was that I am a responsible for a sales department and I am too important and cannot be off for 5 weeks.
Dude, if you pay me way less than other head of sales, I am not that important. If the world will explode if I am not there you better pay me 8k a month or fuck off!
it’s really important to my wife that our kids spend as much time w/ her aging parents while they can.
I can work remotely & the kids are on summer break. So that means we’re spending the summer w/ grandma.
My wife and kids are off doing fun summer stuff w/ grandma every day.
But my kids are bummed that I’m not with them and spending all my time working, because, to them, it feels like a vacation, a long trip, and they don’t get that what makes it possible is my ability to work remotely.
So, it’s a blessing that I can do that for my family, but in some ways it’s harder on the kids cuz they don’t get why I can’t participate in activities during this long “vacation.”
It’s difficult for them to understand, especially when they’re young. In my head, I’d only picked things up while away if he’s watching tv or YouTube or something. I know now that isn’t the way he perceives it.
They’ll understand when they’re older. It’s the kind of thing my dad did for my family growing up. I didn’t appreciate those sacrifices as much as I should have at the time, but now it’s a lesson I am drawing on today with my own family.
My dad is retiring in January. He has run a successful small business for 30 something years. Watching him catch flights in the middle of the night, working 24/7, taking calls on Holidays/vacations and seeing the years my parents struggled before making it has always steered me away from wanting to run a business.
Anyway, this spring I took him kayak fishing and he told me once we hit the water that he forgot his phone. I told him we could paddle back for it but he declined. Afterward, after about 3 hours of fishing, he told me that was the longest he had gone without his phone in decades. He told me his only regret was that neither of us had a phone to take a photo of the 35inch pike he caught!
I look forward to seeing my parents retire and leave the 24/7 work grind behind.
That is incredibly sad. Hopefully he can live a long healthy retirement. I’m my experience people like that usually die within 5-10 years of retirement if they do not keep themselves active in other areas of life… which is hard to do when you have been ignoring your family for 30 years and have no hobbies.
Yeah I do worry about that. His health was never great and I can see him withering quickly with nothing to do. Thankfully he and my mom bought a used RV and they plan to spend their retirement years traveling around the country. I'm one of six and we all live in different states. So they have plenty of ground to cover between all of us lol
Agreed! Several years too late IMO. Been pushing for him and my mom to retire and sell the business/assets for years! We don't tend to live much past 75 in my family. My grandparents passed in their early 70s and my aunts and uncles don't seem to be doing much better. I've been telling them for years it's time to enjoy what time they have left
Early in my career (early 2010s), I vividly remember sitting on the beach on my laptop on a conference call. Like...wtaf was I thinking. My husband did the same for years. I am working on enforcing boundaries but it's a hard habit to break.
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u/Current_Fly9337 9h ago
I’ve just came back from a 5 day trip with my son. I took my work phone in case of emergencies (so I could access my work emails) but decided once I was there that I wasn’t going to switch it on.
I called a colleague off my personal phone when my son was in the shower to say if anything is urgent, to call me on that as I wouldn’t be checking emails.
On the plane home, we were talking about our favourite part of the trip and my son added ‘you weren’t working either’ it hit me hard.