I'm sorry you got the warning! That never feels good. I think you have to take the information and use it. Do you like the job, overall? If so, don't take days off right now. Relaxation can happen on the weekend if need be. Many companies have a policy of you have to work X number of days until you earn your vacation time. Remember, when you aren't there, no one is doing your job. It may concern your manager. I understand needing to recharge your batteries. Could you get it done on the two days off a week you have?
And the 8 pm meeting.Sigh. Ya, that stinks. BUT, it's work.And you are fairly new. So, I'd have gone unless there was a real reason you couldn't. I have a meeting tonight at my son's school from 8:30 until 10 pm. I was like WHAAATTTTT. It's a theater meeting which is an activity he is joining. It's not at all convenient but it's for my kid. I'll do it. Sometimes we have to suck it up and just do things.
Your boss may have different ideas about work/life balance than you. Is this a job you want to keep? Maybe it's not the ideal place to work if you feel very differently than they do in terms of when/how much to work.
But I personally have to eat and keep a roof over my head so do what I have to do.
Is this a 5-day-a-week job, or more days than that? The short answer is, if you agreed to specific hours when you accepted the job, your boss has the right to expect you to be there at those times.
If it's an average 40-hour-week kind of job, it's possible that if you had asked for one unpaid day off per month without giving a specific reason, the manager might have considered it, but only IF he had plenty of other people who were looking for more hours, and also if it wasn't hard to schedule them to cover for you.
But most of the time someone hired for a particular job, is expected to be there specific days. This is to prevent gaps and scheduling hassles galore.
Saying you needed a day off per month to go have fun was tactless. You're not getting paid by the company to take off and have fun, you're getting paid to help put out the goods and services.
Regarding the meeting, this would depend on what your role is and what the industry norms are. If your role is an executive or professional one (in other words, salaried, pretty well paid and with significant responsibility), you should go to every meeting even if they last all weekend. It's part of how you get worth the big salary.
But if you are only paid for the hours when you're working, and if 8 pm was nowhere near the time you usually work, and if you're a relatively low-level employee and don't plan to stick around very long or care if you get a promotion, I think the boss shouldn't have expected you to attend the meeting. Ask another person to give you a run-down on what happened there, so you get any important information.
It sounds like what your boss is really reacting to is that you're acting like your job is really not that big of a deal to you. It's not much fun to be a boss of an employee who doesn't want to be there. If you find the job boring or irritating or depressing, it would be a good idea to try something else.
I've definitely been there, but for school. However, it ended up being more than just depression in the long run. After a time of being unmotivated, unfocused, in constant need of a break, and feeling almost blurred I knew something was wrong. After telling my parents for 2 years that I had ADHD, they finally took me to a different doctor that specializes in ASD/ADD/ADHD and sure enough, I was right. My diagnosis changed my life. I was diagnosed with ADHD combined type, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder type II, and sensory processing disorder (mild). If I were you I'd do my research on ADHD symptoms for hyperactive, inattentive, and combined. Make sure to make your search specific to gender and age because the male "stereotype" is what is often looked for but females (like me) and misdiagnosed and overlooked for years because they tend to mask ADHD easier. I hope this helps!!
I think depression can impact one's ability to enjoy things. They've it anhedonia. But usually with that, one finds they can't enjoy much of anything. It sounds like you take time out of work for enjoying other things so maybe anhedonia does not apply to you. Losing your drive can happen. We get burned out, lose our get up and go and it can make work harder. Low level depression that is chronic is a form of depression too that can be challenging. You STILL get up but you don't feel right and aren't yourself. I was treated for dysthymia (which I think is the old phrase for 'persistent depressive disorder'. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/persistent-depressive-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20350929 When I had this, I went to work, went out, did things but was certainly not fully living my life and life was hard. Treatment changed things dramatically for me. That's just my story, everyone is different. But I still think you should talk to a mental health professional to get some ideas of what you can do to feel more yourself at work. If it is more an issue of the job just not floating your boat anymore, then be realistic and begin searching for a new job or do your bare minimum for this one.
Well, having been a manager for many years of small businesses, while I think we all would benefit from less of the unnecessary work most of us do nowadays (how many of you out there grow food, hunt, gather, make clothing, or provide shelter?), if you're running a business you need folks to actually come to work. If you don't want to do that, find a way to make money that doesn't require you to do that. But as long as you're going to work for others, nobody's going to let you have a day off every month to have fun. To employers, that's what your days off and vacations are for. I also don't see how that links to depression, which if you have it exists whether or not you're at work and is probably less at work because your mind is busy and has less time to think those thoughts that are making you depressed. Again, whether it's good for society or not, and I believe it's not, as your manager, I would have fired you. I had a small staff and needed them to not only be there but also to want to be there. Now, if you work for a huge company that has a surplus of employees, assuming such a company exists, then you're not all that important to the business because nobody is as there's a lot of redundancy and the product probably wouldn't be missed if the business disappeared tomorrow, but that's how society is currently organized. Again, if I could design it I'd make it a lot different than it is, but I don't get to do that, but if you're young enough, maybe you should move into politics and see if you can change the ridiculous emphasis we have on making money. But again, as a former manager, I'd have fired you. As for the meeting, if you're important to the company and are needed in a meeting, you go to the meeting. if you don't want to do that, again, find a different job that doesn't appear to require as much work. Some jobs, especially higher paying ones, require a lot of hours to be put in including after hours when meetings don't get in the way of the day's business. In addition to having been a manager, I was an attorney, and the hours for attorneys are quite long until you get old and make partner. I was also a self-employed writer, and in that case while I got to set my own schedule, I worked seven days a week. So again, how much and when we work is owing to the type of activity we make as our work. In the meantime, if you are in fact depressed and not just someone who'd rather be doing something other than your current job more of the time, what kind of help for that are you seeking?