It’s My Birthday, And I Will Work If I Want To…OBJECTION!
Years (well, decades) ago, I had a co-worker named Debra*. Debra was an awesome hard worker and I always admired how good she was at our job. Debra was so hardworking that it thoroughly surprised me when she relayed to me that she always took a day off for her birthday. Regardless of how much money she could make at work on that day, or what day her birthday fell on, she didn’t care. She always requested off for her birthday. She told me that one year, she did make the mistake of working on her birthday and the rest of that year was pure hell for her. I thought that was a really good practice.
After Debra taught me this little tid-bit, I cannot say that I have always followed it to the letter when I became an attorney. There was always a trial, or a really tough case calendared that made me put forth the excuse that I couldn’t take off on my birthday. But, I am going to now call bull-shit on this.
I am right here, right now, committing to no longer working on my birthday. That is it. No more. Sayonara birthday work! Our birthdays are the one day that we are supposed to sit back and reflect on our own well-being for our past year of life. No, New Year’s Day is not for this necessarily. Your birthday is the day that is totally dedicated to you taking a pause and thinking about you and only you and how you faired this one year more you have made it on this earth. Why in the hell would we be working on this day? We have other things that are more important to do on our birthdays than work. No matter how much we love our jobs and our work, I am now a major proponent that our birthdays are not the day to devote to our jobs, no matter how much we love them. This is a day that needs to be devoted to enjoying and rejoicing in another year of life. We didn’t come into this world working, so we shouldn’t mark these annual reminders of our birth with working either.
Paying homage to one’s own birthday with special gifts and extra attention to how the day is spent is a relatively modern practice. According to an article in The Atlantic by Joe Pinsker (“The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations”, last accessed February 8, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/11/history-birthday-celebrations/620585/) the emergence of the idea that one should mark the anniversary of one’s birth with special tidings could be attributed to the development of industrialism and the growing availability of clocks in homes. The idea that with the increasing knowledge and attention to the time of day due to the growing ubiquity of clocks in American’s homes made people a lot more cognizant of how time was passing in their own lives. So, I say that we take advantage of this history of celebrating birthdays and take great pains to not devote that day to work and toil.
As I was writing this post, I started thinking about how many people I know actually take off work on their birthdays. So, of course, I decided to do a highly unscientific and impromptu Facebook® poll of my Facebook® friends to see how many people (at least I know of) take off work for their birthdays. I am very fortunate to have a highly responsive and supportive Facebook® family who at the drop of a hat participated and contributed to such an unscientific and limited study! Of all the people in my Facebook® family that responded, approximately 65% responded that they DO take their birthday’s off most if not every year. I think that is awesome, promising, and something we lawyers need to seriously consider.
I think so many of us use the same excuse of work and what needs to get done to legitimize our decisions to work on our birthdays. Our work is too important. We can’t reschedule things. The client needs this ASAP. All those things may be true, but it cannot continue to be the reason why we don’t take our birthdays off and for ourselves.
We cannot be fierce advocates for our clients if we cannot even find the time to celebrate our own efforts; and what better time to celebrate our yearly efforts of living but on our birthdays.
So, in this forty-third year of my life (yes….I am forty-three, damn it!) I am vocalizing my opinion that we, as attorneys, love ourselves enough to celebrate ourselves on the one day that is truly our own. Cheers everyone, and put that time in now to take OFF your birth anniversary!
*name-changed to protect the privacy of those named
