On Topic: Off the clock

On our desktop computer at home resides a clutch of photos from our vacation last month. They're mostly of ocean views, great stretches of untamed sand meeting blue skyline and various stages of my getting sunburned around the edges.

The most telling image, though, would have been a shot my wife and I attempted to take, right where the rough tide had built up a three-foot-tall range of sand the night before. Except what happened was I'd moved a slight step to my right, then another - and then, as Lisa was about to press the shutter, the sand gave out under my feet, like a trapdoor in a magic act, and I dropped right out of the picture.

The shot would have shown my wife looking around to determine what had become of me. (Yes, I know, a missed opportunity in photo journalism.)

The metaphor here is this vacation was a long time coming, and I confess for the early run of those seven days off I wasn't fully committed to the concept.

I checked my work email. Not 24/7, and often my phone had no reception, especially close to the ocean.

But I peeked. And I messaged photos to work colleagues (some of whom ignored the bait, and I'd like to think it was because they were, charitably, trying to enforce a vacation ban).

After a while - and as I admit, it took several days - I slipped into a nonwork mode, like grudgingly agreeing to shut up and go to sleep already, as my parents used to tell me.

The thing is, though, I'm not alone in this vacation reluctance. In 2014, some 40 percent of us nationwide didn't use all our PTO days - on average, about 3.2 days.

That's according to Project: Time Off, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of tourism groups who naturally enough want us all to take more vacation, in a survey of some 1,300 Americans done on behalf of the U.S. Travel Association.

Whose fault is that? Well, Project: Time Off suggests we mostly have only ourselves to blame.

' Forty percent of us grumble about the backbreaking load of work there would be when we return, the group said.

' Thirty-five percent subscribe to the belief no one else can do our jobs. I for one don't think I am irreplaceable; I'm more in this next camp:

' Twenty-one percent reported the fear they indeed are replaceable and, if they're away from their posts for a long time that sad fact would be apparent to their bosses.

To be fair, the group also found a colossal 67 percent of us suggested our employers give mixed messages about using earned time off, if not outright discourage it. When asked about this for the travel association survey, about a third of senior managers admitted they rarely talk up the importance of getting away from work.

In Japan, a survey last year concluded 17 percent of respondents planned to take no days off whatsoever. (That's compared to 13 percent of Americans who expressed the same non-vacation-plans sentiment, according to that Expedia Japan survey.)

So lawmakers there have been considering legislation that would require employers to make their workers take days off. Japan also has created more national holidays.

Beginning next year, Mountain Day, Japan's 16th national holiday, will be celebrated on Aug. 11. This could be to offset the already existing Marine Day, aka Ocean Day, observed on the third Monday of July.

The notion is if several co-workers are taking a long weekend, maybe you will, too.

It's a clever idea and worth considering for export. We have mountains and oceans in this country, too, after all.

We could institute Prairie Day, and maybe River Weekend. Or Emerald Ash Borer Remembrance Day.

Whatever we come up with, they could constitute more opportunities for us vacation-phobes to consider abandoning the workplace for a brief turn, and spend time somewhere, anywhere else.

And, ideally, not fall into the ocean.

' Michael Chevy Castranova is enterprise and business editor of The Gazette. (319) 398-5873; michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com