No travel? Maybe you should.
vacation (n.)
late 14c., "freedom from obligations, leisure, release" (from some activity or occupation), from Old French vacacion "vacancy, vacant position" (14c.) and directly from Latin vacationem (nominative vacatio) "leisure, freedom, exemption, a being free from duty, immunity earned by service," noun of state from past participle stem of vacare "be empty, free, or at leisure," from PIE *wak-, extended form of root *eue- "to leave, abandon, give out."
Meanings "state of being unoccupied," "process of vacating" in English are early 15c. Meaning "formal suspension of activity, time in which there is an intermission of usual employment" (in reference to schools, courts, etc.) is recorded from mid-15c. As the U.S. equivalent of what in Britain is called a holiday, it is attested from 1878.
vacation (v.)
1866, from vacation (n.). Related: Vacationed; vacationing.
Recently I attended an excellent series of seminars put on by a legal organization of which I am part. These were part of a convention, and were put on for the purpose of education in the special interests of the group, which in turn generates Continuing Legal Education credits. In my state, as in many others, a lawyer is required to have 15 hours of Continuing Legal Education every year, including at least 1 hour in ethics.
Most of the topics directly pertain to our declared area of practice focus, but one was on a two part seminar on ethnics. Half of that was on lawyer well being.
It'll surprise no one whatsoever if they do any research on the law that lawyer well being has reached a point of discussion such that it is regarded as a matter of crisis within the profession and even without. Just last week a study was published on things to avoid if you didn't want to be unhappy, and one of the four things on the list was "being a lawyer".** It may be that lawyers were once like the Finns were once. . . expected to work hard, shut up, and die because of the triumph of the conditions of our lives over our own well being.*** But probably not. Things have probably gotten worse for us over the years.
In my view, and of course I could well be wrong, the negative transformation started in the 1970s when the Baby Boomer generation entered the practice and slowly influenced it such that it became focused on economic return as its purpose rather than its professional nature, something that professional organizations such as the American Bar Association had struggled to build for years. But that didn't cause that to occur alone. The flood of additional lawyers that started coming into the field in the 1960s and lasted all the way into the 2000s put a emphasis on economics in a way that the prewar field lacked to the same degree. The deregulation, moreover, of lawyers, which commenced with the elimination of some practice restrictions and advertising restrictions was brought about by the United States Supreme Court, to the entire fields detriment. The modern evolution of admission to the bar has made things even worse with the Uniform Bar Exam, which has separated lawyers from the law of their own states and opened up the floodgates of lawyers from large cities practicing across state lines in spite of their routine lack of knowledge of the law in those states.
All that has created an atmosphere that isn't universally nifty, and I suspect that translates itself into a perception of blueness, if you will.
Well, anyhow, one of the topics that's been addressed by some as this has come about is whether or not people who enter the law are inclined by their pre law natures to get into a funk. This seminar discussed a study that showed that, nope, they aren't. That's good news for lawyers, really, as it means that they weren't drawn to the profession as it attracts melancholics or something.
Of course, it's also bad in that it means that something else is causing that blue mood in the profession, assuming that its really there. It might not be.
There's been who have studied this and claim that all the data on it is really false as it relies on statistical self reporting, which is unreliable. Indeed, it suffers from an odd sort of confirmation bias that really sets all such data way off. It may be, indeed, that not only is the population of lawyers no different in psychological make up than anyone else, but that the entire concept that they're more prone to the funk isn't correct either. I've seen at least one lawyer argue that in a state bar journal somewhere.
Having said that, what statistical data we can really actually draw suggest that there is something going on. Lawyers definitely, according to statistics (again) are more likely to suffer from depression and a host of actual psychological ailments, such as alcohol and drug addiction. If lawyers mental make up isn't any different from anyone else's, that suggest something about their line of work is. Frankly, that's fairly obvious.
Anyhow, the person who did the seminar reported that the number one thing that seemed to make lawyer well being better was. . . vacations.
Lawyers are like everyone else in this respect as well, although a lot of the ones I know are very good about taking vacations. Americans as a whole, however are not, even though its one of our main industries. Statistically Americans leave a lot of vacation days on the table every year. They just don't think they can afford to take them.
And there is indeed something really wrong about that.
So, anyhow, the simple but apparently effective solution for lots of folks, and I dare say it would include Americans as a whole, who are depressed at record numbers, is. . . take your vacations.
Naniwa no bessÅ akebono no zu (Sunrise at the vacation cottage in Naniwa).
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*Etymology is the study of word origins.
It may be just me, but I love it. It's fascinating. Particularly for a language such as English, which is derived from so many others.
**The value of such studies is frankly questionable. One of the other things it questioned was owning a house. Well, I've rented and I've owned and owning is definitely much, much better.
***This was the Finnish ethos up until probably the 1950s, and it reflected the harsh economic conditions of the time. Finnish men, but not women, died accordingly at relatively young ages.
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