That's men for you: 'Leisure guilt" is a phrase which refers to the phenomenon of feeling guilty about taking a holiday away from work.
Most of the people I have noticed indulging themselves in this form of guilt are men. Most women appear to have more sense.
Yet as more and more women become embedded in busy and demanding careers, I expect they, too, are falling victim to leisure guilt in increasing numbers.
By the way, if I was writing this 10 years ago I would have had to apologise for producing it at the end of the holiday season.
But as the Irish appear to have declared a permanent holiday season, timing no longer matters.
Long before mobile phones, the web, or anything like that were invented, I remember visiting a man who was in hospital for surgery and who had practically the entire contents of his office filing cabinet spread across his bed.
He was suffering from leisure guilt. I suspect that at some level of his mind he saw his hospitalisation as an inexcusable vacation away from the real world of work.
I have not seen him for some years but, if he is still around, I bet he goes on holiday equipped with his blackberry or blueberry or whatever the heck it is, a couple of mobile phones and a laptop.
No doubt he also gets in a couple of phone calls to the office as he prowls his balcony on the Costa del Paddy.
He may, in the current Irish style, be taking three or four holidays a year. But unless he lets go, the holidays will be of limited value.
Here are a couple of things to think about between now and your next holiday which, if you are a stereotypical child of the Celtic Tiger, is probably the week after next. After all, one does so badly need a break after one's summer holiday.
The first thing is this: if you continue working during a holiday, could it be that you fear you are somehow a lesser person when you are not working? Suppose your work was taken away from you? Who would you be then?
Well, if you had built your entire identity around your work, you would be in trouble, wouldn't you?
If you think this might have anything to do with your frantic activity while on holiday, then maybe you need to start developing additional aspects to your identity which do not depend on you as a worker. For instance, you could develop your role as a parent, partner or friend.
The second thing to think about is this: there is a Japanese form of therapy called Morita therapy. In Morita therapy, the person who has, say, a depression problem, lives in a residential unit for a week or more.
During that time, no activity is allowed, not even reading or listening to the radio. By the end of the week, the person is delighted even to be allowed to sweep the floor.
The therapy thus renews the person's appetite for engaging with the world (failure to connect with here-and-now reality is seen in Morita therapy as a source of problems).
What has this to do with holidays?
The enforced idleness of a holiday, if you go along with it, can actually reawaken your appetite for work and for getting things done when you return home.
But you have to be willing to go through it and to give yourself up to reading on the balcony, roasting by the pool, sight-seeing and the rest of it.
Deny yourself that deprivation, so to speak, and you deny yourself the benefit of the holiday.
A last thought: if you keep ringing the office because you are worried you will get stabbed in the back in your absence, you can always (a) arrange for a colleague to let you know if anything really, really significant happens; (b) look for another job; or (c) get help for your paranoia.
And if your boss or colleagues continually ring you on your holidays, go straight for option b.
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.