I have been slacking off this week. I had good intentions to get some things done around the house, but those never came to fruition. When it comes to my house, I am simply overwhelmed. I have tried to simplify, to get rid of things, to take things one step at a time, but it seems that my house is always one step ahead of me. There are certain things that I manage to stay on top of–the kitchen (thanks to help from Mr. Geeky and Geeky Boy), the bathrooms (thanks to our cleaning woman and the fact that we are pretty neat in the bathroom to begin with), cooking, and the laundry. The rest–paperwork, the kids’ room, general clutter, small home improvement projects–are just too overwhelming to face. Baby steps, I guess.

I also had plans to catch up on some CSS, to write more (I did not write a single thing outside of this blog), to do a few minor work things that I can never get done at work. What did I do instead? I blogged; I read a lot of blogs. I also putzed around the computer–downloading new things, dressing up the blog. I watched tv. I entertained the children, including a trip to the museum, a movie and a night of board games. I read books. All with a complete slacker attitude. You know, I could do this or not.

Thing is, I’m like this fairly regularly. I happen to believe in down time–serious down time. Sometimes my down time lasts just a day. Sometimes it will last a week–as this one has. A lot depends on how I feel, whether I’m getting enough sleep, the weather (and the weather has been rotten this week). In our work-hungry culture, the kind of down time I’ve been experiencing this week is frowned upon. I should be doing things even when I’m not on vacation. I should have the days filled with activities for the kids.

The U.S. has one of the highest average work hours/week in the world. Additionally, according to this Google answer, lots of people work through lunch and never use their vacation time. I take an hour lunch every day. I’ve started taking days here and there when I’m feeling stressed. This is my first vacation that wasn’t in the summer for an actual trip somewhere or at Christmas time. So I took advantage of it by doing nothing. I have no regrets, really. Yes, I hope to be back in a productive mode come Monday, but for now, I have 3 full days of nothing to look forward to.