I was attracted to my former colleague, Tom Davenport’s post on What I Did on My Summer “Vacation.” He said he worked too much but likes his work and did this work for his summer vacation home in Cape Cod. He said, “There was too much work, but I hardly ever had to go into the office. There was too much work, but I wore shorts and sandals almost every day. So was there really too much work? Maybe I should be grateful just to have work!” He said his house has all the “comforts of work (broadband, wireless network, 2 phone lines, fax/scanner/printer),”

In my case I go to my office in a t-shirt and shorts and only put on sandals to walk the dog who sits by my desk all day. My main, and only, office is less equipped than Tom’s summer home but it is connected to the web. In the winter I might switch to jeans and boots for the walk. This summer I have been very busy and I am grateful for the work and especially grateful that it has all become blog related. When I was Tom’s colleague at a large consulting firm, I went to work on airplanes so this is a nice change.

It is my wife who goes to the office most every day, as she is an academic. Occasionally, I get to tag along to her conferences if the location is appealing but can stay connected to work while she is attending sessions. We do short vacations (one or two nights) scattered around the year rather than a long one in the summer. Since the vacations are short I “disconnect” from the web and reply on advance posting to keep my blog going.

I do not think my work hours have changed since my traveling consulting days, but the web has allowed a much more flexible way to work and as I write this, I am also watching sports on TV. For me, I like the change but I am self-employed and have some measure of control.

One of the comments on Tom’s post, said that summer vacations sounded so 20th century. I think they started as something for rich people in prior centuries, and them became more accessible to others in the last century. My father was an academic who did not make a big salary but we still managed to go away from the heat of New Orleans in the 50s for a week or two every summer to go fishing, either camping or in a modest place near the ocean. The time was available. I wonder what industries still provide that real time to their employees?