I wrote a post in December 2014 about the importance of self-care. I’m taking my own advice again and going on holiday for a fortnight. That means this blog will be quiet too, as the pre-holiday frenzy of client work and writing deadlines did not allow for preparing and scheduling posts.

There’s a lot of talk about self-care for researchers, the self-employed, and people who do scholarly work. Quite right, too; it’s important in these 24/7 professions. But it’s easy for us to forget that self-care is also a privilege.

I’ve been thinking a lot about privilege, partly because I’m writing about ethics and partly because of world affairs. There’s a lot of talk about white privilege, for good reasons, but I don’t think that’s the whole story. For me, privilege is intersectional, just like disadvantage. So some of my privilege is about being white, but I have other forms of privilege too. I have enough time, money, health, and support from others – and I need all of those privileges to be able to take this holiday. There are white people with no privilege beyond their whiteness; they still have privilege, but it does not help them much.

I have a lot of privilege other than my whiteness. For example, I haven’t had to ask anyone for permission to take time off, and I’m not using up a portion of precious annual leave. In fact, I can take as many holidays as I like, in theory, though in practice I have to prioritise working for a living. But that’s going OK because I also have enough money, not only to pay for a holiday (albeit a cheap one), but also to spend a couple of weeks not earning. I thought about my health privilege this morning, as I spoke to a family member, younger than me, who hasn’t had a holiday in years for health reasons. And I have the privilege of a loving partner, family, and friends, who support me.

There are even more forms of privilege in play here. For example, I will be thinking about my freedom-of-movement privilege as I travel through Calais, where so many refugees are suffering. And of course white privilege counts too: I will not experience racism at any point on this trip, and nobody is likely to harass or try to kill me because of the colour of my skin.

I have been reading articles about people living very different lives, dealing with monstrous injustice around the world. I have been reading about people in my own country who can’t afford to eat. Part of me thinks that, with all these horrors going on, I shouldn’t even have a holiday. But a bigger part of me refuses to feel guilty for taking this opportunity. I will, though, be aware of how very lucky I am.