by Penna Dexter

I resonated with a column by Washington Post economic columnist Robert Samuelson about Americans’ love-hate relationship with vacation. He writes: “In theory we love it; in practice we often dread it.” He nails it when he says, “So much expectation is heaped in a few weeks of free time that disappointment, if not inevitable, is common. Worse, our escape from the job and daily routine fills us with anxiety that, somehow, this interlude will inflict a gruesome revenge once we return to work.”

Vacation is supposed to be restful and fun. Perhaps some of us think it’s just not worth it.

Vacation has become a given in American life, a product of what Robert Samuelson calls the “democratization of recreation” that unfolded in the 20th century. He points out that in the 19th century, “only the rich could abandon sweltering cities for cooler resorts: Saratoga, N.Y.; Newport R.I; Cape May, N.J.”

But many of us have trouble letting go. Millions of Americans don’t take the vacation time they’ve earned. Bob Samuelson says that’s a commentary on a new work culture.

The travel industry term for people who don’t take their vacations days is work martyr. They don’t care for the phenomenon.

According to the Labor Department, about 90% of full time workers in the U.S. receive some sort of paid vacation. Between 1978 and about 2000, these workers earned an average of 20 days of vacation per year – and they took it. It’s different now. In 2015, according to a study done by a travel Industry group called Project Time Off, workers earned an average of 22 days per year, but only took 16. Today, half of workers leave some vacation days unused.

Here are some reasons respondents to the Project Time Off study gave for not taking more vacation:

37 percent cited fear of returning to “a mountain of work”
30 percent cited their belief that “no one else can do the job”
And 30 percent said they didn’t feel they could afford a vacation

We have to ask how much of a vacation really is vacation when we’re constantly connected to work via the internet. The author of this study says our mixed-use smart phone draws us back to work by making the office “omnipresent.”

Bob Samuelson says there is a new work culture and even millennials are actually not taking full advantage of vacation time. In fact they’re just as guilty as their elders of being ‘work martyrs’ and often more fearful of taking a longer vacation.

Mr. Samuelson says, “In Europe vacations are a right.” People get at least a month of vacation and they look at us as crazy for having qualms about not taking every day of it. But, he says, ‘work martyrdom’ reflects something positive: “the American work ethic — often declared dead — endures.”

That’s a good thing. But so is a vacation, even if it’s just in your backyard.