The Listening Post is a day early because I am taking a few days off to see family. In America, we have taken to calling such an occurrence “downtime,” an unfortunate borrowing of a term (originating in manufacturing) used to describe that percentage of time when a production line is not operational due to breakdown or scheduled maintenance. The preferred term would be “vacation,” but downtime is actually more apt, given that like most Americans, I have no idea how to take a vacation.<\/p>\n
A sure sign of this is that I am writing my post early, rather than letting it slide while I’m on break. In the past, I’d have dragged along my laptop to post while <\/em>I was\u00a0 off-the-clock, so in that sense, I am improving. But it’s been a very long decade.<\/p>\n The simple truth is, in the American mythos, vacations are a sign of sloth and weakness. The French may well take off the month of August to sip a little wine, make a little love, read in the garden and wade in the sea. And if there is no one back at the office covering their turf, tant pis<\/em>, it’s August. There’s just no accounting for the French.<\/p>\n They probably reckon that the point of working is to make a living. But in my secret puritan heart, the point of living is to do some work. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Since I got working papers at the age of 14, the only time I have ever had more than two weeks off in a row was called unemployment, a form of existence so miserable that the state sent me weekly checks in compensation for suffering it.<\/p>\n I’m beginning to think, though,\u00a0 that I should study up on how to take a vacation. The next step up in my career track is probably retirement, and I wouldn’t want to lack an essential skill needed to do the job.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Listening Post is a day early because I am taking a few days off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1384,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1383\/revisions\/1384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}