Last year was my first holiday season as a fully self-employed home-based professional. Since it is that time of year again, I am thinking about all of the specific things that I can be thankful for in regards to working from home during the holidays. By far the most obvious of these blessings is not having to request time off of work for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, or Christmas. From the time that I was a teenager until I became self-employed and home-based, I have always had at least one job each year that required working one or more shifts on one or more of those holidays.
Each year, there was a race among employees at all of those jobs to request one or more of those days off. Priority was given (and rightly so) to those employees who had children. At that point in time, my son had not yet been born so I was at the bottom of the priority list. There was always resentment among co-workers in regards to who got what time off and that was no fun. Sometimes I would get one of the holidays off, and sometimes not. Sometimes I would get to have the day off on my first choice of holidays that year, and sometimes not. Either way I always missed out on at least some of the family fun and festivities.
Now, for the second year in a row, I am in charge of deciding whether to work on the holidays and how much time I will spend working those days if I do. I can say for certain that there won’t be any eight or nine hour shifts – I do not ever do those any more, except for once in a great while when I have a full day of court hearings. On Thanksgiving, I will be able to immerse myself in preparing a delightful feast for my family and my husband’s family. I love to cook, so it is truly a treat to have the time available that I wish to dedicate to such a major culinary pursuit. For Christmas, we are free to travel to visit my family for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, returning home for dinner with my husband’s family on Christmas night. I have scheduled my work so that it will all get done on other days. Being able to spend time with family during the holidays is my holiday bonus that I receive as a result of being a home-based professional.
Photo by mconnors on morguefile.com.