Ask HN: How do you justify taking unpaid vacation as self employed?

I always enjoyed working from home for few hours and having much more spare hours than regular employees who have to sit in work no matter, if they have actual work or no.

But since I don't wanna be potentially replaced by competition I haven't taken vacation in years (that was not problem before since I was not that busy and could rest enough every day to have free morning or afternoon) and I don't won't to refuse any projects to miss on money I can't imagine taking vacation, because I'm not gonna lose only vacation expenses, but also similar amount in lost income for every day I would not work.

Oh and I forgot to mention because of my partner company is in China I can't follow even my European holidays (while living in Europe), meaning I worked even on Christmas, yesterday and today and have only few free days during CNY and October golden week (but none of them actually as long as in China since I get anyway more tasks in advance or some Chinese will give tasks to us even during Chinese holidays).

The best case scenario would be if my partner company decreased amount of projects, since I would be perfectly fine even with half money I earn in exchange for saving half of the work hours without me rejecting anything, but that doesn't seem realistic.

So how would you justify taking unpaid vacation with family under such circumstances? As I see it now I will give family vacation, meaning wife and children can enjoy different place (beach) and I will work from hotel room, possibly finding few free hours in early morning or late afternoon and free weekend.

and yes, there is also the money reasoning why not to reject something if it's still within my limits, although I rejected rarely some tasks, but it's like <5 out of maybe 200-300 I get per month

I could drop one project I really don't like, because how unprofessional they are, so I started to get quite bitchy about it and also refused recently task and voiced my objections about their workflow/mismanagement. I would not mind at all if they would assign it to someone else, but honestly this project doesn't take that significant portion of time, maybe hour a day and pays better than the other one per minute, like now I just finished 60USD task in 20mins

While I know it is that simple to justify, all of us that have been consultants where our money is dependent on our time understand where you are coming from, so you aren't alone in this. Based on your description though it seems like you are scared of your client taking work away, if true, this is a horrible client to have. The best way to solve this issue is to find a new client. I am a little confused though as you also call them a partner company so I am unclear what your relationship is, but either way it sounds unhealthy and you need to change it. Either you need to set new expectations and new boundaries or you need to find a new client and get away from them.

I always set boundaries at the beginning of an engagement, and I would always set the expectation that if a contract was 3 months or longer that a developer would take around 2 weeks of vacation. So even if the dev didn't take time during that contract and did it after or before, the expectation was there so everyone was on the same page. Plus good clients don't want you to burn out because then they lose out on your services too. When you have a client that doesn't respect you and you've allowed them to dominate you it will never end well. You have to set clear boundaries and expectations early on, doing it later is possible but it isn't easy.

Basically, if you don't fix this soon and take a little time, you will fail by burning out which is much harder to overcome at that point, and can take much longer to recover as well. So best to address this now and not wait.