44

As a Dutch person living in The Netherlands I will be the first to say that life here isn't perfect. I don't think there is any place on Earth that is perfect.
However, life here is still good. One of the aspects that is good is holidays.

I normally get 24 free days per year + national holidays (There are 7 + 1 extra every 5th year for Liberation day). Next to that I can earn extra time off by doing overtime (which isn't difficult). Normally the rule with the company I work for is that you can earn a maximum of 5 extra days, so that would be a total of 29 free days (+ holidays). If you have any days left then you can take a maximum of 5 days with you to the next year.

However, as some have you may have guessed by the title of this piece, this year I will have 44!!! free days (and to be once again very clear, that is 44 days + holidays).
What to do with so many days?
Let's leave that question for later. First let me explain how I even got to get that many days.

It started with problems on a job we did. Due to problems on the construction site we were building a warehouse on I (and my co-workers of course) were asked by my boss if we were ok with going back home much later than usual (we were working in Vienna). Now it should be known that this was in the summer of 2020 and Corona was doing the miserable things it did but nobody knew much and everyone was pretty optimistic about it blowing over soon enough. 
When I was talking to my boss he offered a pay bonus and an extra free day (He was in a pinch because of the planning of other jobs) but I wanted something extra, I wanted to take 10 days with me to the next year instead of the normally allowed maximum of 5.
My boss agreed to this.

Then Corona lasted much longer that anyone would have guessed and I didn't go (or could go) on holidays.
So I took 10 days with me to 2021 and also to 2022 and then Japan opened up its borders again for tourists.
So naturally I wanted to take 10 days with me to 2023. 
I knew I hadn't taken that much time off in 2022 but when I went into the office to ask how much days I had left from 2022 I was told that I had 20 days left.

That was a pretty big shock.

Normally this would mean that I would take 10 days with me and the other 10 days would be payed out. 
However, I decided to try something different.
I went to my boss and asked if it was possible to take the full 20 days with me into 2023.
And to my, little, suprise my boss gave his ok!
So that is how I now have, for 2023, 44 days to take time off from work to do what I want to do.

So, what to do with these days?

Well first up is my upcoming holiday to Japan. For that I take 11 days.
That leaves me with 33 days left.
As Christmas falls on a Monday and Tuesday I need 3 days to make it a full free week.
That leaves me with 30 days left.
I want to go to Japan a second time, that will use up probably 15 days.
That leaves me with 15 days left.
I should inform you, my dear reader, that I work 5 days a week so those 15 days left are the same as 3 weeks time off from work.
What to do with those 15 days?
Now to be honest, I have an idea, but next to it being so outrageously crazy it also isn't exactly completely in my own hands. But yeah, it is crazy so I can't write about it for now.

All in all this is just a rumbling mess of thoughts I wanted to eternalize on this digital paper. Let me first go on holiday (at the time of writing this there are just 39 more days till departure) and after that who knows what life will bring.