Three Days Are Enough
Tomorrow is Mid-Autumn Festival — the one holiday that's supposed to be about gathering. Three days off starting tomorrow, and I'll spend them alone, away from home.
Most of my colleagues are doing the 调休 shuffle. 调休 — literally "adjusted rest" — is how Chinese holidays turn into long stretches: to make a festival feel bigger, you move rest days around and pay the borrowed time back later with weekend work, often taking a few personal days to bridge the gaps. My colleagues bridged all three breaks — the Mid-Autumn days, three more via 调休, and the National Day week — into one straight run of thirteen days off.
I didn't. Not out of principle, exactly — out of tiredness. The whole game felt like it cost more than it bought: trading little half-days, shuffling the calendar, then repaying the debt with long, drained stretches of work afterwards. When one long block finally ends, there's the quiet reckoning — falling back into the routine with a sigh. What I wanted this week wasn't more days. It was a clearer head.
So here I am: three days, no plans, no commute, no one else's schedule. On paper it's smaller than thirteen. But it's mine in a way the big stretch wouldn't have been — unhurried, quiet, free to be filled with nothing at all.
Three days won't change my life. I just want a clear head when Monday comes. Happy Mid-Autumn.