In which I take time off from working to comment on faculty working

Faculty are very, very fond of studies insisting that we work over forty hours per week.  And...some of us do! (Especially my colleagues over in the STEM fields.)  But, I rather suspect, most of us do not work over forty hours per week on a consistent basis.  The workload differs drastically according to, among other things, the phase of one's career; local service expectations (and the availability of faculty to do service); professional service expectations (which increase as one becomes more visible--more peer reviewing, organizational work, and so on); teaching load; course preparations; number of students; research expectations; and discipline.  Plus one's personal life (spouse? children? ailing parents?).  My own hours logged vary drastically semester-by-semester and week-by-week.  Are there fifty papers to grade, or are all the students doing research presentations? Am I teaching a new course with umpteen equally new novels, or Brit Lit II for the 1000th time?  Am I on three different committees and chairing one (all extremely busy), or am I on a single committee which has little to do? Am I in the writing phase on a new article or book, or am I in the "walk around the village and think about my argument" phase? I'm comfortable saying that, yes, at a minimum, I work a standard forty-hour work week, counting all contact hours, course preparation, service, and research activities.  There have absolutely been weeks this semester when I've done much more than that (see under: all those committees), but all the time? No.  But, then again, the work doesn't stop, even when I'm on "vacation."   This summer, I'm committed to writing an article, as well as presenting at a major conference, and I've also got an idea for another article kicking around; my next winter break will involve my doing something that I Cannot Yet Reveal on this Blog (because I'm waiting for official notification--I hope I'm not hallucinating the email confirmation I've already received...), but it will definitely involve a few weeks of being in a library from 9-5 or so, not "vacationing."  So might my work hours average out to more than forty hours per week if the entire year were taken into account, even though I'm officially "not working" during those months that, um, I'm working? Possibly.