[ghaff]

My philosophy is that if I have some downtime on a weekend or holiday, I might skim my email and if there's something I can respond to quickly or just let the person know I won't have a chance to look at it until next week, I'll do so. I don't feel a compulsion to not even glance at work stuff when off the clock. I also don't feel a compulsion to never help someone out with something if it's easy (or if I made a prior commitment to doing a specific task during downtime).

And, yes, I've taken a month off here and there and things were fine--but there were people who were pretty much shocked I could just go and do that.