For some, taking a vacation feels like work

Chris Oldham is a veteran vacation-skipper. He finds it very hard to get away. Despite getting flack from his wife and three sons, he rarely takes more than a long weekend, and when his bags are packed, there's no guarantee that he will go.

"I've had plane tickets purchased, family plans made, and two days before I leave, I'll cancel," says Oldham, executive vice president at J.M. Coull Inc., a Maynard construction firm, who gets three weeks annual vacation plus about a half-dozen paid holidays. "It's a way of life."

Even in a country famed for minimal time off and increasingly equipped with portable work, there are a hard-core few who are practically allergic to the ritual of a real getaway.

Given weeks of vacation time, they'd sooner stay at the office. Some, like Oldham, point to the competitive nature of their business. Often, their own driven natures play a hand, too.

Vacation-skipping can lead to burnout, lost loves, and more. Yet done carefully, it might be the way of the future. With work and home entirely blurred and the two-week pure holiday getting to be history, those who can rejuvenate on a diet of small breaks might be work-life trendsetters.

"It's a work-in-progress," says Robin Dziuba, a Providence-based vice president in the private client group of Merrill Lynch, of her own efforts to find a balance of work and play while avoiding long breaks.

Dziuba has taken two big breaks in two decades, a two-week trip in 1991 and 10 days in 2002, yet she disliked feeling behind upon returning to her client-driven business. So she and her husband, a firefighter, have been taking sporadic days off through the year, partly also because they have an elderly dog that they don't like to kennel.

"I'm not comfortable taking extended periods of time," says Dziuba of Bellingham, who, like all Merrill employees with 25 years of service or less, gets a month off, plus nine holidays and four personal days. Quarter-century veterans get five weeks. Long weekends "fill that need that I have to get away," she says.

For some, vacation-skipping isn't a matter of choice. We're the only advanced economy in the world that doesn't guarantee workers paid vacation time, and nearly one-quarter of the US private sector workforce gets no paid time off -- not even holidays, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Full-time workers who get time off receive on average 19 days, including holidays.

Still, 56 percent don't use up all their vacation, including 30 percent who say they take less than half owed to them, according to a survey published in April by the New York staffing firm Hudson.

"The fear people have in the US is that they'll miss something important, so the next time there's layoffs they'll be first in line," says John Schmitt, a senior economist with the Washington-based policy research center. Many people use vacation days just to manage their lives, he notes. A day here goes for a funeral, a day there is used for a child's illness.

For some who've got the time but never take it, burnout is a danger, says Medfield executive coach, Suzanne Blake, a self-described recovering workaholic. Many vacation-skippers "have an inner task master," she says. "It's a coping strategy, but they don't know how to turn it off." The rush of all-embracing and often exciting work is a drug to such hard-chargers.

Warning signs include feeling that life outside work is empty, sensing disconnect with loved ones, or exploding for little reason at inopportune times. "When they're yelling at the grocery clerk, that's usually a wake-up call," says Blake.

There are, however, ways to work hard and have a life, too. Sometimes, for instance, vacation-skipping is temporary. This past year, I've worked nearly every weekend, and missed out on a lot of vacation time with my family while writing a book. It's a good cause, and my kids understand, since this won't last. We have our fun in snippets for now.

Oldham, meanwhile, is taking what is for him oodles of summer vacation: one three-day weekend this month, with another planned for August.

And Dziuba continues to tinker. She's trying to take Fridays off this summer, perhaps building up to a week off next year at an Orlando time share she purchased in 2002 yet has never used. Two weeks, however, are not in the picture.

"I can't conceive of taking that much time off," she laughs. "Maybe I'll try."

Balancing Acts appears every other week. Maggie Jackson can be reached at maggie.jackson@att.net.