The holidays are always a great time. I am a particular fan of Thanksgiving because of..well let's just be honest here, the food. I'm also pretty far from the majority of my family distance wise so this is one of a handful of times that we get to all see each other throughout the year.  With that being said, this year was a little different.  This year I didn't travel to see any family members. In fact I didn't even have any turkey on Thanksgiving day. So why was I still so excited knowing my holiday was going to pan out this way. I was excited because I finally got to take a break.

Without going into too much detail about what I do, let's just say that a typical week has me working Monday through Friday from 6am to 6pm and as soon as January comes around I might as well forget that Saturdays even exist until. Many of you out there face similar situations in your employment. Working a 9 to 5  doesn't seem to bad until you factor in other time consuming things such as travel, family time,  cooking, extracurricular if you're involved in any school clubs or church groups. The point that I'm trying to make is that after we finally finish up with everything that we HAVE to do, we have very little time for ourselves.

This is exactly why I decided to use this Thanksgiving as my personal holiday. I gave myself off from Wednesday until Sunday and although I participated in a few fundraisers and community service events these were all things that I wanted to do, not things I had to do.  The point of this five day break was to give me a chance to refresh and reset myself before I get to the point where I burn out. After all who says a vacation has to be to an extravagant place.  Sometimes just letting your mind relax and get away from those day to day responsibilities can have the same effect. 


*If you would like to read about how I used this period to improve my trading please visit the "Follow A Pro Trader" Blog. I should have it up either tonight or tomorrow*