Not ALL about the job, Part 2

So, what do you have to do to change things? Think outside the box...

Can you afford to work fewer days per month, and does your employer support unpaid leave? Take a Thursday and Friday off once a month and get a 4-day weekend. Are you able to work a 4/10 schedule and get regular 3-day weekends? How about a 9/80 and get a 3-day weekend every other week?

If none of these options are available to you, you need to be a bit more creative (unless you're independently wealthy) and look at splitting up your vacation time, maybe take one week of your annual allotment and divide it into days and make periodic 3-day weekends... but plan them far enough ahead that you can be ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

For me, the thing that made me start thinking about it was fishing... specifically, FLY FISHING for trout. That means RUNNING WATER to me, mostly in the Sierra Nevada region, freestone rivers and streams, which are mostly seasonal (first weekend in May thru Nov 15th).

The season is 6-1/2 months, the water is at reasonable flow rates roughly 4 of those months, and so there is a limited number of days where fishing is more than a simple excuse for drinking and not being at work. Knowing that I have other obligations that prevent me from simply going whenever I feel like it, I determined that I could probably go 5 of these 16 weekends- figuring in travel time, setup and tear down camp time, etc that would mean 2 'fishing days' per 3-day weekend.



When I did my calculation, I realized if I could fish in reasonable health, which includes the ability to walk streams, wade knee deep, deal with the altitude, etc. I could probably fish until I was 75-ish. Given my current age, after doing the math I was surprised to find out that unless I made some changes, I was only going to have a few more than 200 of these days left!!! That's less than a year... and to me, that was unacceptable.

So the next plan? When can I retire, and what can I do to push up that date to allow more days to pick from during the limited season. I was on my way to figuring that out until the recent downturn in the economy... and that, coupled with some changes in structure with my employer have provided some additional challenges.

But I'm NOT giving up... and you shouldn't either!