Writes Helena Fitzgerald, in "All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year/The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a time when nothing counts, and when nothing is quite real" (The Atlantic).
The author "is a writer based… in New York." I presume that means New York City, and not just because I know it is the convention in New York to say "New York" for New York City and to specify "New York State" if you mean to refer to the state. There's no other state where people add "State" to the state's name. Imagine if in Oklahoma, you said "Oklahoma State" to signal that you didn't mean Oklahoma City. Anyway, I know that means New York City because the people on the street have a distinct look of being off from work. If the author goes outside she's struck by everyone looking at loose ends. New York City is such a workplace.
Anyway, for me, out here in Madison, Wisconsin, every day is the equivalent of a day in Fitzgerald's "Dead Week." And I like getting up early and drinking coffee and looking at a day with no appointments or obligations. Does that mean the days "feel slow"?
I don't know, but I love the topic of the perception of time. The other day — who cares when? — I was asking Grok: "What are some things smart people have said about the perception of the speed at which time seems to pass? Obviously, there's the basic 'time flies when you're having fun,' but I'm interested in the problem of wanting to feel that time isn't flying by and that the only way to make it seem to go slowly is to not enjoy what is happening."
I won't go into all of what Grok found to talk to me about but:
In his work "Being and Nothingness," Sartre discusses how time can feel elongated or compressed based on our engagement with the present moment. He suggests that when we are fully absorbed in an activity (a state akin to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi later called "flow"), time can seem to slow down, even if we are enjoying it. Sartre notes, "When we live the anguish of being, we are not in time; time is in us."
How's your flow this Dead Week?
CORRECTION: There is one other state that gets "State" added to its name: Washington. This state got its name in 1853, long after the city Washington became prominent. It should have received a more distinctive name! But the other name that was considered was Columbia — note the Columbia River — and that was rejected to avoid confusion with the District of Columbia. Absurdly, they ended up with confusion with the same city. When the territory of Washington was becoming a state in 1889, there was some talk about a new name — maybe Tacoma. But no. And now it's Washington D.C. that, if it becomes a state, that needs a new name.
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Helena Fitzgerald nicely summarizes retirement.
We do say Washington State.
What I came to say. ‘Washington’ is DC to most people, even many on the west coast…
This year the corporate transparency act is killing us, as we waited and hoped the ruling would say we didn’t have to do the reporting. Y’all are paying for it, too. Pay attention Trump administration- free money by nixing the requirements. Besides you won’t be using the information to attack your iwn citizens the way the previous administration was planning to do…
I'm always surprised how things slow down, and traffic thins out between New Years and Christmas. Where is everybody? Surely they all cant be at their in-laws or the Carribean. The workload at the office also dies down. Why work, just take the whole week off. Personally, I love it.
And yes, people due say "Washington State" because "Washington DC" is constantly referrred to. But then, there's little reason to talk about Washington state. While full of libtards, the state isn't that bad. Seattle is the home of the crazies.
Huh. I've only ever heard "Dead Week" as a term that referred to the week before finals in college, during which professors couldn't assign any work so students could concentrate on studying. (And I haven't heard it used that way in a generation.)
To find that it apparently means the week between Christmas and New Year's during which offices are closed just makes me think this author is another privileged elitist. Most offices DON'T close during that week, in my experience, and certainly most places of work that aren't offices are open.
As I've aged, each year becomes a smaller percentage of my total life, and this affects my perception of the passafge of time as each year seems to go by faster, and faster, and faster. If I live to 80 my last year will pass about 100x faster than my earliest years, when school terms lasted forever and 2:45 to 3:00pm took a whole day. Oddly summers then passed in a blur, too.
The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is still a good time, with the hurry of holiday preparations for guests just ended, and the beginning of next year's struggle to survive still days away.
Prof: "I was asking Grok: 'What are some things smart people have said about the perception of the speed at which time seems to pass?'"
Did Grok return anything about "the significance of the passage of time?"
You did specify smart people....
JSM
BTW, we used to have the "12 days of Christmas". This was usually a long holiday celebrating: "the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany (that is, through the end of 5 January, as Epiphany begins the following day) as a sacred and festive season, and established the duty of Advent fasting in preparation for the feast."
I dont think it ever caught on in the USA, probably because of the Puritans who hated Christmas, and wanted everyone to make money and sit in their cold, barren pews drinking hot water.
Does it even make a difference any longer?
"The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is still a good time, with the hurry of holiday preparations for guests just ended, and the beginning of next year's struggle to survive still days away."
Early in my career I usually managed to take off the week between Christmas and New Year's and loved it. As things progressed, my ability to do so vanished. I was responsible for keeping the lab funded.
Now that I'm retired, I love it again.
Dead week we go over the list of the soon to be dead year’s best known dead.
...and we do say Texas City - where appropriate.
Predicting who’s going to die is not as easy as it seems. So far the DeathList 2024 has claimed only 5 - “DeathList is a list of 50 celebrities chosen by the DeathList committee, before the year starts, for the liklihood that they may die during the year.”
My husband will work part of this coming week, and he worked part of last week. Dead Week is an elitist term. How many businesses will this writer visit? Those people don't have Dead Week.
The link is broken, Lem- who on the list (how big is it) died? The people I would have put on the list are still alive- Jimmy Carter, Dick Van Dyke, and Mel Brooks- though maybe I would have put Bob Newhart now that I am thinking about it. I had to check to make sure, but Henry Kissenger died at the end of 2023.
I was driving past the Walmart shopping center yesterday- packed parking lot.
They don't call the state "Oklahoma State" because that's the name of a university.
We upstaters are reconciled to the fact that we need to say "New York State" or people will misunderstand. But even the song "New York State of Mind" is about New York City and its suburbs.
"She is currently at work on a book about the 1977 blackout in New York City."
I see this reference in her bio's going back to at least 2016.
I have a suggestion for Helena!
Sorry about that. DeathList 2024 - “The DeathList rules are summarised as follows: Candidates must be famous enough such that their death is confidently expected to be reported by the UK media; Candidates cannot be famous solely for the fact they are likely to die imminently and only 25 candidates can reappear from the previous year’s list.”
After retirement my weeks became six Saturdays and a Sunday -- store hours are different on Sunday and some places are even closed.
SNL has always been “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday Night”
For most years of my career as a transaction lawyer, there was a spike of activity --deals that had to close-- before the end of the year (generally because of pending tax law changes). So, my dead week would usually start maybe December 31, or Jan.2. The contrast with normal time was heightened. Once the leisurely pace of organizing files and clearing the desk was done, the peace was delightful, at least until January 15, when the gnawing fear that I would have no deals for the new year began.
Dead week does indeed have a unique feel, and it is different than pretty much every week in retirement or even vacation week. Time does seem to be slowed down. Pleasantly slowed down. Pleasantly, because any time of the day seems a good enough time to do whatever you feel like doing, and no time of the day is meant for anything in particular.
In retirement for example, you may have a personal dead week all the time, but there's the realization that the rest of the world is in flux, with things to do and needing to be done at certain times of every day. So you're not suspended in pleasant shared calm like you would be in universal dead week. In universal dead week, as you sip your coffee at 3:46 am, you know...and it feels good to know...that there are lots of other people out there probably doing the same thing, and contentedly wishing "Happy Dead Week" to everyone else.
So, Happy Dead Week everyone.
To me, November and December go by very fast while July and August go on way too long. Not because of my engagement with the present moment, but probably because of how much daylight a day has.
I'm a winter person--I like the colder weather, occasional snow, and the longer nights. Dead Week is best of all because it also reduces the din of modern life created by others.
Reduced viability week, but not dead.
The navel gazing on the left has no bounds.
Back when I managed a lab of about 65 scientists in a biotech company, the COO hated the idea of “dead week” and forced me to create a shit ton of busy work for everyone. Needless to say, I was hated for this.
I took all of last week off. My own little dead week. I'm back to work tomorrow. Deadlines.
"Nothing is real,
And nothing to get hung about."
The thing about time that annoys me is that I can't remember the future. I asked Grok about it. I read a few books on time during the past year, although I'm not positive I understood everything I read, and it seems that if time is just another dimension, I should be able to remember the future. I like Grok's third and sixth responses as to why I can't. If it is just physical/cognitive limitations, then it would be possible to build a computer that could remember the future.
I think we're better off not knowing the future, but that doesn't stop me from wondering why time seems so one directional.
"I read a few books on time during the past year"
Me, too! Did you read any Lee Smolin? He's one of the few physicists who believes time is real.
I think the claim that time is an illusion (the predominant view of physicists) is ridiculous. Watch them tie themselves in knots explaining why we find the moment labeled "Now" to be special even though, according to time-deniers, it's not.
I think their problem may lie in insisting on holding onto the principle of time-reversibility of elementary particles into the macroscopic world.
I worked in the investments world most of my career. It could be busy but could also be quiet those last two weeks. I generally took vacation before Christmas because I preferred to enjoy all the holiday events…The Messiah, decorations, finishing Christmas shopping, etc. I would work the last week because others wanted that week, and it did have that dead week feel in the office. Most everyone was slower than usual in demeanor.
We have an easily overexcited group here, so I don't want to cause a panic, but -- there's a problem with the coffee supply.
Kill me now.
I work 7 days per week, but not very hard. If anything, this is a particularly trying time of year. No, I am not Santa Claus.
In Ireland, we expected something like 3 weeks of uninterrupted freedom at Christmas. This was in a corporate IT environment. Okay, since I was the yank who loved overtime money, I got a lot of calls during this stretch. What I loved about working there was how seriously sport was taken. USA in the World Cup? "Of course you won't be in for the match days". Ireland in the World Cup? "We're shutting down the office and serving Japanese food for the party while we watch the match".
While not outrageously busy, this December turned into a bit of a struggle with a couple of weeks early away from home, a somewhat unexpected funeral that my wife needed to travel to, going through the seasons with the new pup (who arrived in July), all of which made the usual demands seem more burdensome that they usually would be.
I am looking forward to a dead month in January.
"When we live the anguish of being, we are not in time; time is in us."
O-kay. Tell me you are a French philosopher without saying you are a French philosopher.
I'll take Original Mike's share!
This brings up Summer Vacation - which always went too fast. And then was the horror of looking at the Calendar in August, and suddenly realizing that one only had 2 more weeks of vacation, then back to school. Those two weeks of freedom went even faster.
Yancey: maybe you should update your post: "The people I would have put on the list are still alive- Jimmy Carter ..."
As they say at the Indian call center--Time is illusion; lunchtime doubly so.
The best part of the academic year to me was the paid week off, Christmas through New Year--that was even better than the intersessions when the students and teaching faculty left but us librarians stayed on the job with the other essential workers.
You should have seen him mime it.
Man, talk about getting results on that DeathList! I go there and read it and Jimmy Carter is still alive. I check back in an hour later and he has gone to his eternal reward.
I had to take last week and next week off. I was getting close to the "use it or lose it" in my leave time. Hadn't had a vacation in a year and a half, and that's when I moved dad up from Florida, which wasn't a vacation.*
*Going through Atlanta on a Monday, in the rain, at 4pm, with dad's car on the trailer behind the U-haul isn't for the fai t of spirit.
My law career has been different, with the courts mostly shutting down over the week of Christmas and New Year's, so the office goes into slo- mo, and most taking half days. A good time to clean everything (why am I keeping this?) out.
“ He suggests that when we are fully absorbed in an activity (a state akin to what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi later called "flow"), time can seem to slow down, even if we are enjoying it.”
What i consider “flow” is when you are working on something and you go into an altered state, and when you wake up, the problem is done. An example is an exam where you get the test and look at the clock seemingly a second later and an hour has passed, and all the questions are miraculously answered. Time speeds up, it does not slow down.
Then it's time to crack each other's heads open and feast on the goo inside.
Well, ain't that a bitch!
Hey Yancey, you just killed Jimmy Carter! The Angel of Death had forgotten all about him until you posted your comment.
“ ...and we do say Texas City - where appropriate.”
Fun fact: I was conceived in Texas City.
I know people who live in Washington DC. I say they're in DC -- which is a lot easier to say than 'Washington' -- and a lot clearer.
I love some of the descriptions of the people on that DeathList- Clint Eastwood, rather than actor is just "Dirty Harry". Louis Farrakhan is "nutter"
😳
From Dead Week to Dead Day.
I lived in nearby La Marque when I was a small child.
That's what they want you to think.
Fun for your parents, at least.
I was told I was conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. I may have some of the details and fine points wrong.
First time in 25 years I haven’t taken time off around Christmas. With my children grown, “Dead Week” has become too dead. Not enough time to travel or start some serious project, it began to feel like just a succession of days walking, reading, and waiting to take up work again. Plus it’s invariably grey and wet this time of year.
What I should do is save up every quality, bingeable TV series just for this week. If it was a week of Wolf Halls and Little Drummer Girls it would be pleasant and relaxing indeed.
Well, Obama is still alive!
There's no other state where people add "State" to the state's name.
Disagree. When I was in the service, and people would ask where I was from? I said, 'Washington.' And not a single person thought I was talking about Washington state.
Eventually, I simply said Seattle (even though I was from Tacoma) because they knew where Seattle was and I didn't have to go through the explanation between State and DC.
Now? I just say the Pacific Northwest. General enough to give a location, yet not specific enough to elicit mockery and/or sympathy.
Around here (southern California), folks will say Washington state to differentiate it from Washington DC.
For me, Dead Week was and will always be the week before finals. In college and grad school I was always on the quarter system, so Week 10 was dead week. I remember time coordinated screaming on campus from those days -- UCSD undergrad and Stanford grad school.
Conceived? People will say "born and raised" but not "born and bred" ... I'll say born and bred in jest sometimes though. Born and bred Los Angeles here, LOL.
Well Gerda, surely you realize that if the person is indeed a French philosopher, anguish is about all they can hope for.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Ah yes, the famous Csikszentmihalyi ! Who doesn't know him. What a name. At least its not Gopnick.
"In an interview with Wired magazine, Csíkszentmihályi described flow as "being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies." --WP
It's best she just stay at home, where the Guatemalans won't show up to set her on fire.
06:47 and logged into my work computer and two IT calls. Slow but not dead for me. Railroads never stop working.
I grew up in Washington (state) and never really had to specify the state: When you told people where you were from; if you were in Washington, you said the city, Spokane. If you were in a nearby state, like Oregon, Idaho or Montana, you didn't need to add state to be understood.
Now I've lived on the east coast for 32 years and find that I pretty much need to always say, Washington state or the assumption is that I mean D.C. When I go to that other place, I never call it Washington, it's always, "the District" or D.C. Given the proclivities of New England, I call the place I fly into, "Reagan", every time. It's a way to push some buttons, in an entirely unimpeachable way.
Among writers they usually mean New York County, that is, Manhattan.
Nothing that brainy. The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli.The Clock Mirage
Our Myth of Measured Time by Joseph Mazur. And some random articles I found online. It was early this year and I don't remember what else I was reading.
My problem might be self-solving. Yesterday I was annoyed that I couldn't remember today. Well, now I can, at least all but about the last half hour of it.
(j/k)
It's Christmastide! Nothing "dead" about it!
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