Working Vacation

Jessi and I are spending time in Colorado visiting family. We're here on a "working vacation". Basically, it's a combination of working and vacationing. For example:

Today Jessi and I both worked from the kitchen table this morning for a few hours. I had a phone meeting and made a report. Jessi worked on a flyer for an up-coming event.

Then we took off to go fishing. The river and canyon were beautiful! We could see the fish in the water and had a blast trying to land the fly right in front of it. Despite seeing the fish, we didn't catch anything, but it was still a ton of fun. Vinnie ran around like crazy too. Check out the scenery:

Jessi's brother, Abe, fly-casing:

Jessi spin-casting with a fly & bubble:

All of us happy after a good afternoon of fishing:

Then we went home and I worked for a couple hours more: replying to emails and such before relaxing some more.

On a different day, Jessi and I went on a double date with her parents. It's was great fun. We played mini-golf and ate a nice dinner. I really enjoyed it.

That's a typical "working vacation" schedule: work in the morning, relax or do something fun for a few hours, work some more, then have a fun evening. The trick is to have a job that can pretty much be done from anywhere. I realize not everyone has that privilege, but if you don't love your current job, working from a computer at home has some great perks. :) Since Jessi and I both have computer-based jobs, we can work from anywhere.

I also did take a couple full days off for larger outings (well... It was actually for the road trip to travel to Colorado). Vinnie was a great traveler too. He just slept and look out the window the entire time.

The advantages of a working vacation are huge! Officially, I took 2 days off, but we were gone for 11 days including weekends. It's a way to extend our time away. Since I like what I do, it's not a big deal to have to work. In many ways it's not a vacation, it's just traveling.

Some people go really extreme: they'll work from Paris for a month or two! If you go that long, you can rent out your home short term and actually break even on living expenses. I don't think we'll ever get that extreme because of Vinnie, church, and real estate commitments, but a couple weeks is very feasible.

I highly recommend trying it out. Our next step will be to try it when we're not visiting family. Maybe the next student loan we pay off will go towards that type of "vacation".