I had a day off today. More or less a man­da­to­ry one. If I didn’t take it then (un)officially it would have gone. It’s a kind of new rule in our local orga­ni­za­ti­on. Back­ground: we work 40 hours per week, but get paid for 38 hours. To com­pen­sa­te we have one day per month we can use for vaca­ti­on. In a lot of cases employ­ees don’t use this day eve­ry month and keep them for a week long vaca­ti­on during sum­mer or around christ­mas. Which can lead some­ti­mes to avai­la­bi­li­ty bott­le­necks in the work­for­ce. To over­co­me this we are now requested to use one day eve­ry month other­wi­se it is gone.

Today it was the last calen­dar day I could use it, alt­hough I have a lot of work to do. But isn’t that not always the rea­son not to take a vaca­ti­on day whi­le you are entit­led to do so? And pro­ba­bly I nee­ded it as well becau­se with no alarm set this mor­ning I woke up at around 8 AM which is excep­ti­o­nal­ly late for me. And it took me ano­ther hour or so (and some cof­fee) befo­re I real­ly felt that the sleep (or tired­ness) was gone out of my body.

I used the day like it was real­ly vaca­ti­on (see­ms the right thing to do, but it is not always that easy). Didn’t open my work­mail on my lap­top or iPho­ne. May­be I will have a look on Sun­day to see what I can expect when I start on Mon­day mor­ning. We have a four-day long work­shop and if the­re is any­thing urgent for my team (or myself) to work on I need at least be pre­pa­red on what to do (or dele­ga­te). What I did instead was to spend a lot of time to migra­te my Janu­a­ry posts from micro.blog to my new Pika blog. It just took me a few days to feel real­ly at home here and made a deci­si­on to make this the cen­tral repo­si­to­ry for what I have writ­ten / publis­hed in the past on dif­fe­rent plat­forms. It will take con­si­de­ra­ble time to com­ple­te but the­re is no dead­line. And I alrea­dy got the con­fir­ma­ti­on from the Pika team (thanks Bar­ry!!) that they will migra­te my Word­Press archi­ve in the next weeks. 

At the end of the after­noon I dro­ve to the super­mar­ket becau­se I had pro­mi­sed my wife to make gril­led ham/cheese sand­wi­ches (in dut­ch: tosti’s) for din­ner. After din­ner I thought about con­ti­nuing with the blog migra­ti­on work but ended up on the couch next to my wife wat­ching old re-runs of Law and Order. Not that I like this show but it was a per­fect excu­se to drink a glass of wine together and do nothing else than just enjoy each others com­pa­ny. 

Afterthought: I lis­te­n­ed a lot of music today. Not by paying a lot of atten­ti­on to it, it was more on the back­ground whi­le I was busy with my blog. But one song got my atten­ti­on and I can’t get it out of my head. It’s not just a musi­cal ear­worm, it’s more the lyrics itself, sung in an almost haun­ting way by Bon­nie “Prin­ce” Bil­ly: from his new album The Pur­ple Bird which was relea­sed today:

Is my living in vain? 
Is my giving in vain? 
Is my praying in vain? 
Is my fas­ting in vain?

Am I was­ting my time? 
Can the clock be rewind? 
Have I let my light shi­ne? 
Have I made nine­ty-nine?

No, no, of cour­se not 
No, no, of cour­se not, it is not all in vain 
It is not all in vain, becau­se up the road is eter­nal gain

Is my praying in vain? 
Is my labor in vain? 
Is my sin­ging in vain? 
Is my spea­king, is it in vain?

Is my playing in vain? 
Is my praying in vain? 
Is my labor in vain? 
Is my sin­ging, sin­ging in vain?

No, no, of cour­se not 
No, no, of cour­se not, it is not all in vain 
It is not all in vain, becau­se up the road is eter­nal gain