Back to Work after a Week-Plus Off

Today it's back to work after a week-plus off. My last regular workday was Friday the 19th. Now it's the 29th. I was off for 9 days. Well, 8¾ if you count the bit of work I did last Monday. 😅

Coming back to work after a hiatus like this is a bit disorienting. One full week isn't long by European time-off standards, where taking a whole month at a time to travel or just relax is common, but it's still enough to get out of the habit of working. Today it's like, "Oh, I've got to sit down at my desk at 8am? And work? All day? And tomorrow, too?" 😭

And it's not like I even did much with my time off. I didn't even get the memo I had the week off until the week before. By then it was too late to plan anything.... Not that we would have planned much, anyway, with Hawk's recovery from surgery. And things went from "not great" to way worse early in the week, so even if we had planned to go somewhere, we'd have been rushing back home. So I spent most of the week off sitting at home. It was like working from home, just minus the work. 😞

This week's a slow one at work. Many of my colleagues are off until Friday (the day after New Year's) or next Monday. Many of our customers are out, too. My company's holiday break of Dec 22-26 was a bit weird because most companies that are giving holiday breaks this year are scheduling them Dec 24 - Jan 2. The short of it is, there's not a lot of meetings or calls this week. I might take a day off on the 31st just so I don't feel guilty sitting here doing nothing.

Oh, the Places I Went! (2025)

Every year around the new year I write a variety of retrospectives about the year just finished. Several of those are about travel, as that's the main theme of this blog and one of the things I most enjoy in life. My travel for 2025 is done for the year so I can post this summary a few days early.

Here are Five Things about my travel in 2025:

1. I traveled 89 days and 72 nights in 2025. These figures are down slightly from 2024's tallies of 94 and 81. I/We just didn't get out as much as I/we wished. More on that below.


2. Business travel was up.... Business travel made up 40% of my travel in 2025. That's double 2024's 20% share. Partly that's because I actually traveled on business more in 2025 than 2024. Though it wasn't for customers and trade shows. I mean, I did travel for a few each of those, but not significantly more than in recent years. The increase in 2025's business travel came from internal training meetings.


3. ...And leisure travel was down. Business travel took a larger 40% share of my travel in 2025 not just because I had more days on the road for my job than in recent years but also because I spent fewer days traveling for fun. Why? Basically because being sick sucks. January was a loss because Hawk was sick for 6 weeks. October was a loss because she was recovering from foot surgery. Other than last Sunday's same-day mileage run December was a loss as well due to sickness. And the suckiness of being sick is going to pinch leisure travel this coming year, too, as Hawk has another surgery in late January. Aside from business travel I do solo, we likely won't go anywhere in January, February, or March.


4. I flew 48,300 miles in 2025. That's down from nearly 55k in 2024 but is in line with my average over the past few years. Next year might be a lower mileage year with a few months of no leisure travel... but if I follow through on plans to retire early in the year I expect to travel a lot more.


5. Bucket List items checked off: 1. It's been a slow year for progress on bucket lists. This year I didn't visit any new national parks. I'm still at 53/63. I finished visiting all 50 states and Washington, DC in 2024. I did visit two more countries this year, Italy and Spain, bringing my tally to 25 countries.

More 2025 retrospectives to come.