Extracting yourself

Long Service Leave is a wonderful idea - take yourself away from work and life for an extended period and relax and be recharged. Great! Fantastic! Except for one small thing - the actual process of extracting oneself from life's routines is about as simple as getting a straight answer out of a politician. When you're not around for three months to pay bills - actually, receive them in the first place (I'm going to miss seeing those little windowed-envelopes), nor any of the predictable and unpredictable happenstances of life, one has to be prepared. Unfortunately, this has to be done in parallel with the ordinary aspects of life which must be continued. So for an extended period you find yourself living two lives - one which unfolds in the moment, and one in anticipation of the time away. I reckon if you have to live with that stress for as long as we are, you NEED long service leave. It's times like this that I wish I had remained in teaching - then there is a whole bureaucracy to make one's absence possible.