Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?
10 by Markoff | 10 comments on Hacker News.
I am working from home and my workload steadily picked up over years currently almost reaching my limits working basically full time, some days 08-18 only with few minutes break for lunch. I always enjoyed working from home for few hours and having much more spare hours than regular employees who have to sit in work no matter, if they have actual work or no. But since I don't wanna be potentially replaced by competition I haven't taken vacation in years (that was not problem before since I was not that busy and could rest enough every day to have free morning or afternoon) and I don't won't to refuse any projects to miss on money I can't imagine taking vacation, because I'm not gonna lose only vacation expenses, but also similar amount in lost income for every day I would not work. Oh and I forgot to mention because of my partner company is in China I can't follow even my European holidays (while living in Europe), meaning I worked even on Christmas, yesterday and today and have only few free days during CNY and October golden week (but none of them actually as long as in China since I get anyway more tasks in advance or some Chinese will give tasks to us even during Chinese holidays). The best case scenario would be if my partner company decreased amount of projects, since I would be perfectly fine even with half money I earn in exchange for saving half of the work hours without me rejecting anything, but that doesn't seem realistic. So how would you justify taking unpaid vacation with family under such circumstances? As I see it now I will give family vacation, meaning wife and children can enjoy different place (beach) and I will work from hotel room, possibly finding few free hours in early morning or late afternoon and free weekend.