After several unseasonably late cold snaps, it seems that "gardening season" has finally started, around here.
We've been working in our vegetable garden area — albeit 2-3 weeks later than usual — cleaning up beds and putting in the spring starters of tomatoes, broccoli, onions and various other things.
The garden is a poignant reminder of how "things keep happening," even under adverse conditions... and somehow, it's always the undesirable weeds that are the fastest and strongest in claiming space. So it seems to be with life, itself, where turning your head and relaxing for even a second invariably seems to lead to increased efforts to "get back on track."
As a self-employed person, I have often seen that with my "microbusinesses."
On the few rare occasions where I have allowed myself to relax, and even to take a week's holiday, it invariable feels like just one week away results in four weeks of work to just get back to where I was, before going on holiday.
My wife and I like to plan trips back to Denmark during the summers, every few years... usually, we are there for three weeks, plus a good 36 hours of travel time on both the front and the back.
Whereas those trips are wonderful and welcome and relaxing... making them actually happen often feels like planning a major expedition to Antarctica, or something similar... with all the attendant expenses and preparations.
Most people look at the cost of their holidays as airfare, hotels, dining, entertainment, incidentals and such. For us, it's a little more complicated.
Aside from the obvious cost of almost 4 weeks for a petsitter/housesitter, and paying the home overhead (which obviously doesn't go away just because you're on holiday), there's also the "cost" of essentially "mothballing" several small businesses for four weeks, and the hidden "cost" of essentially losing all income for the equivalent of 8-9 weeks — basically a week to shut down, four weeks to be shut down, and another four weeks just to get back to the levels we were at before we shut down.
So part of the expense of going on holiday is not only fact that you are "bleeding cash" at the actual holiday end, but at the same time, you have zero is coming in, at the home end.
Small wonder many self-employed people never go on holiday!
That's one of the "privileges" that comes with the freedom to do your own thing, on your own terms... and it is very much like the garden: If you "look away" for even a few moments, the extent to which you are set back tends to amount to much more that just "a few moments."
Even so, I have no desire to trade this life for anything else!
Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!
DO leave me a comment — engagement matters! Communities are built because people INTERACT with each other through the content that's created! So share your opinion, be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer all worthy comments!
Sequence: 056 — Timestamp: 2022.05.10 - 10:22 PDT
All content and photos by the author unless otherwise specified — this is UNIQUE content, created expressly for this platform. NO CROSS-POSTING!
Wow what a beautiful vegetation, I love it.
Thank you!