3 Reasons to Take Time Off Work When You Move

Seriously, why am I like this?

This past weekend, I moved.

After spending four years living in the woods, I’ve migrated back to the suburbs.

This was a local move of sorts, with my new home roughly a twenty-five-minute drive from my old one. And while staying in the region has many advantages (holding onto friends, community, and a support system the major one), it’s still, you know, a move.

Which means there were downsides.

One downside to a local move is that I didn’t take packing as seriously as I should have, leading to some questionable and haphazard decisions like dumping armloads of loose possessions into the backseat of my car to rattle around and crash into each other as I drove down the mountain.

Another downside is that I thought, given that it was a local move, it would be less disruptive than, say, an out-of-state move, and I could therefore accomplish the entire thing without taking any time off work.

I don’t know why I’m like this.

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Someone recently told me that the last time she moved, she took an entire week off work.

Next time, I will definitely do that.

Here’s why.

Reason 1: Time is confusing.

If you know me at all, you’re aware that I struggle to process time.

Yet I make my own work schedule.

Despite knowing that I often overestimate my capacity while underestimating the amount of time things take to accomplish, I still thought I could somehow craft the perfect moving plan—a plan that would allow me to meet all my usual work benchmarks while still carving out adequate time to pack up all my possessions, transport them down the mountain, and set them up in their new environment without a hitch.

The levels of hubris and self-delusion were off the charts.

Reason 2: Weekends are finite.

When I decided to move without taking time off work, I reasoned that I could get most of the big stuff moved on the weekends, concentrating on work during the intervening weekdays while packing, transporting, and cleaning here and there as my schedule allowed.

But I’d failed to take a few key factors into consideration:

1. How much stuff I own (read: how many books)

2. How much time it takes to pack and transport items

3. How bad I am at both those endeavors

4. How short weekends really are

There’s only so much you can get done on a weekend.

Reason 3: Every move throws a curveball.

It doesn’t matter if you’re moving down the street or across the world. Every single move will throw at least one spanner in the works.

During one move, I was headed overseas to live in a country that required complicated forms and permissions, and I didn’t realize until days before I left that I hadn’t completed all the requisite medical checks.

Another, I was on crutches and couldn’t help on moving day.

Four years ago, I was just days out of COVID quarantine and couldn’t move around much or think clearly or talk without coughing.

This time around, the day before the big push, as I was frantically trying to box up the last of my possessions, I had a bat encounter that necessitated taking an afternoon off from packing to drive a bagged-up bat carcass down the mountain to the county health department so that its brains could be tested for rabies.

You know, the usual.

Considering my moving history, the bat thing was no big deal—especially since it turned out not to have rabies, meaning I didn’t have to drop everything to start the vaccination series.

In fact, all things considered, this was one of the smoothest moves I’ve experienced in my adult life.

That’s largely down to friends and family who went above and beyond to help me get from Point A to Point B without major catastrophes.

But I still don’t want to move again any time soon.

Or maybe ever.

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This past weekend, after moving furniture pieces up and down the stairs with a group a friends, I sat with one of them on the new couch as we cooled down.

I looked around the living area, which hasn’t yet taken on that organized and homey feel, and wondered if this had all been worth it.

“I’m not doing this again,” I told her. “And when I die, just bury me here.”

She laughed.

I didn’t.

Because hear me out.

This could work.

When the time comes to lay me to rest, use the house as my casket.

Lay me out in the front room. Set explosives at the four corners of the building, planning for the structure to collapse in on itself, sinking directly into the earth—ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Then build another structure directly on top of me and let the entire cycle start over again.

Of course I’m kidding.

Unless you really want to do that.

Because I’d be fine with it.

Just don’t make me move again.

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