"My favorite part of Dead Week is getting up early, drinking coffee, and looking ahead to the long stretch of nothingness that fills the day."

"The nothingness doesn’t have to be slothful; sometimes I leave the house and sometimes I don’t, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. If I don’t go outside, I don’t feel bad about it, and if I do, everybody else I encounter looks equally confused and at loose ends, frittering away these leftover days. It is the only time of year when the days feel slow to me, when the time outside of whatever tasks I have to do does not somehow vanish into further worry and busyness. It is the only time I don’t feel like I am perpetually late to my own life...."

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."

"I’ve gotten so lazy with my youngest one, because there’s so many, that at night I put him in his clothes for the next day..."

"So, he has dinner, he takes his bath, but then I’ll be like, 'Hey, dude. It will save an extra five minutes if we get dressed now and then you can sleep later,' and I can sleep later, wink wink."

Said the celebrity Tori Spelling, quoted in "Tori Spelling Gets Backlash for Dressing Her Son for School the Night Before—But Should She?"

That's in Parents, last September, and I'm seeing it because it's linked in a new article in New York Magazine, "On the Internet, Everyone’s a Bad Mom."

"In 2009, Christopher Frizzelle... pioneered the first 'silent reading party' at the city’s Hotel Sorrento."

"Accompanied by live piano music, the in-person and virtual reading series fosters 'healthy peer pressure' and a sense of community, according to the Silent Reading Party website. Silent Reading Party offshoots are proliferating worldwide.... The $20 events take place at night and typically sell out weeks ahead of time. Curious to explore the power of healthy peer pressure, I paid $10 to attend a recent late-night Silent Reading Party on Zoom.... For two hours, a pianist accompanied readers with dreamy New Age music, occasionally interrupted by the icy clink of a bartender’s cocktail shaker. I read my book, occasionally forgetting I was not alone. Then I’d peer at the hotel scene, where participants read in silence, took notes and sipped their drinks...."

Writes Stephanie Shapiro, in "I’m retired, and I still won’t let myself read in the daytime. Why not?" (WaPo, free access link).

You'll notice that the bit I quoted has nothing to do with what's in the headline. But it's a sidetrack that caught my interest. When I'd first read about the idea of a "silent reading party," I thought it was a pleasant idea. I thought the website was used to let people know where the group reading would take place. I was surprised that you had to buy tickets (and that some clown would be tickling the ivories). If you want to read with other people around you, go to a café. Or — here's an outlandish idea — a library.

"Staying in bed after you wake up is appealing because we crave agency..."

"... said Eleanor McGlinchey, a sleep psychologist at Manhattan Therapy Collective.... Much like 'revenge bedtime procrastination' — the act of staying up too long to make up for the hours you spent working or caring for others during the day — lolling about in the morning is front-loading that 'me' time before responsibilities invade.... Quality time for yourself can slip into something more detrimental — such as a mindless hour or even longer on social media....  Generally speaking, though, lounging in bed can be time well-spent...."

From "How Long Is Too Long to Stay in Bed? Asking for a friend" (NYT).

I think the right question is not how long but how good — quality, not quantity. That's true about staying in bed and it's true about being on social media. Hence the "mindless" in front of "hour."

Googling, I see this article has also had the title "‘Bed Rotting’ and ‘Hurkle Durkle’: Can You Stay In Bed Too Long?" That's a more exciting headline, especially for those of us who respond to words.

And it looks as though this article, positing the sort of question you'd want answered by a sleep psychologist, was inspired by a TikTok trend...

.

"They’re really annoying, especially in the workplace. They’re like: 'Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 10.30am.'"

"Or in emails, I’ll tell them: this is all grammatically incorrect, did you not check your spelling? And they’re like: 'Why would I do that, isn’t that kind of limiting?'"

Said Jodie Foster, quoted in "Jodie Foster says generation Z can be ‘really annoying’ to work with" (The Guardian).

"Americans have been nursing a shopping addiction for a while, and e-commerce has only deepened our problem."

"The psychologist Joshua Klapow told Time magazine that online shopping is 'psychologically so powerful.' It can temporarily lift one’s mood, providing a special type of retail therapy purified by a total lack of effort. E-buyers can bypass the schlep, the dreaded walk-around inside a store, the money handling or grueling Apple Pay tap. The human interaction...."

From an essay by Sonja Anderson, in the NYT, "The City That Never Sleeps … or Shops in Person." 

Anderson uses this cutesy video from the Atlantic to support her accusation that shopping on line is, pretty much, a mental problem:

"Perhaps the portrayal of Black idleness will always be, if not haunted, then framed by a broader context that makes it seem like an act of resistance rather than a simple fact of life."

"'When we talk about Black people and time,' [one curator] says, 'we’re talking about stolen labor, stolen time—and each of these images steals it back.'... [The curators] show that Black people around the world have been reposing, alone and in each other’s arms, for a long time...."

Writes Emily Lordi, in "The Visual Power of Black Rest/Black people are generally pictured as doing anything but relaxing—as being attacked, or agitating, or performing. The Black Rest Project aims to widen the lens" (The New Yorker).

"The show is part of a broader initiative called the Black Rest Project... [which] will explore the complexities of rest for Black people, and challenge the binary assumption that one can either slow down or make a living, can either struggle or sleep (a myth encoded in the activist mandate to 'stay woke')."

"What are some famous examples — in truth or fiction — of a character who puts a lot of effort into being able to be lazy?"

I ask ChatGPT, a propos of the previous post about the "Lazy Girl" jobs. I was influenced by a comment from Jamie, who wrote, "Heinlein wrote a story called 'The Man Who Was Too Lazy To Fail,' about a smart but lazy guy who spends his life and career thinking up efficiencies and ends up very successful."

ChatGPT answered me:

I see Instapundit is linking to "The ‘Lazy-Girl Job’ Is In Right Now. Here’s Why."

That's in the Wall Street Journal. Subheadline: "Rather than lean in, young workers say they want jobs that can be done from home, come with a cool boss and end at 5 p.m. sharp."

Here's the Instapundit link. Quips: "Career goal of the moment" and "it’s unfair if women get paid less than men."

I was thinking about blogging that "Lazy-Girl Job" story yesterday. Quip: I was too lazy.

"I grew up in South Korea, where there are two words that can roughly translate as 'laziness': geeureum and gwichaneum."

"Geeureum’s connotations are more or less identical to the English—the word bears the same condescension. But gwichaneum lacks the negative valence. There’s even a kind of jest to it. To feel gwichan... is to not be bothered to do something, not like it, or find it to be too much effort. The key to understanding the term, however, is how it fits into Korean grammar: You can’t say 'Bob is a gwichan person'; you can only say something like 'Doing laundry is a gwichan endeavor for Bob.' The term describes tasks, not people. It places the defect within the act. Errands that are gwichan induce laziness in you.... Gwichan nails what’s wrong with the litany of errands that plague our everyday existence: Many of them don’t merit our devotion.... Gwichanism (a popular neologism in Korea) is not an apologia for anti-productivity or anti-work, and the gwichanist will still fulfill their vital life obligations. You see, gwichanists aren’t unproductive; they’re perhaps meta-productive, interrogating the merit of every undertaking.... [E]mbracing gwichanism allows me to assert the primacy of my preferences, however esoteric...."

Writes Sheon Han in "The Case for Selective Slackerism/How a Korean term helps me reconcile my moments of discipline and sloth" (The Atlantic).

In this view, as I understand it, it's not that you avoid all chores. It's that you differentiate among chores and you view the chores as the source of the laziness. It's interesting to think of the activity itself as producing the feeling and to relieve yourself of a moral burden in feeling lazy.

Is English lacking the words for this distinction between 2 types of laziness? I can see that I have a tag for "laziness" and a separate — and important! — tag for "idleness." There are also many English words in the general area: "apathy," "inertia," "lethargy," "sluggishness," "sloth," "lassitude," "loafing" (I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease...)....

But perhaps none of these words expresses the difference between the general resistance to work and the resistance only to a particular type of work. And yet, let me suggest "irksome." We speak of the "irksome task." That does seem to blame the task itself and not our own laziness. It makes sense, in English, to say I am not a lazy person, but that is an irksome task.

"Yes, the French are... lazy. It’s just not in the way we lazily think."

I'm reading "Are French People Just Lazy?" by the historian Robert Zaretsky (NYT).

By its own account, "Cubik is 'a deeply human organization' that 'seeks personalities before skills" — "you don’t just work at Cubik, you 'Be Cubik.'"

"An online quiz prompts you to discover your Cubik profile: Reflection, Action, or Relation. 'Cubik’s V.I.P. drinks have hardly begun and you’ve already talked to all the guests,' the description for the last category reads. 'You now know at which sport Jean-Yves is unbeatable, where Joëlle will spend her vacations, and that Antoine has planned to cross Slovenia on a tandem bicycle.' Whew. Jean-Yves, Joëlle, and Antoine might be having the time of their lives. Or they might be frantically texting the babysitter or wishing they were at yoga class. Cubik boasts, 'Because we are proud of our culture, we have many rituals for getting together.' These include an annual corporate retreat just before the summer holidays, 'to celebrate the past season and take a step back from working.'"

From "The Right Not to Be Fun at Work/In a win for workplace dignity, a French high court recently decreed that businesses cannot force their employees to participate in supposedly enjoyable activities" (The New Yorker).

Can the capacity to have fun be made one of your professional responsibilities? It's one thing to be allowed to have fun or even encouraged to have fun or rewarded for bringing your delightful spirit of fun to the workplace. But it's quite another to fire you because you're no fun. But what is this "fun"? An employer's idea of fun can be distorted and burdensome. Isn't that what the TV show "The Office" is about? I don't know, I don't watch it, because I can't stand that sort of thing even vicariously.

"After opening the choice of Word of the Year up to English speakers for the first time in its history, over the last two weeks more than 300,000 people cast their vote.... And the winner is... Goblin mode."

"‘Goblin mode’ – a slang term, often used in the expressions ‘in goblin mode’ or ‘to go goblin mode’ – is ‘a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.’ Although first seen on Twitter in 2009, goblin mode went viral on social media in February 2022, quickly making its way into newspapers and magazines after being tweeted in a mocked-up headline. The term then rose in popularity over the months following as Covid lockdown restrictions eased in many countries and people ventured out of their homes more regularly. Seemingly, it captured the prevailing mood of individuals who rejected the idea of returning to ‘normal life’, or rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media...."

So says Oxford Languages (the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary).

Sample quote from The Guardian: “Goblin mode is like when you wake up at 2am and shuffle into the kitchen wearing nothing but a long t-shirt to make a weird snack, like melted cheese on saltines.” 

Here's an Axios article from last April: "Musk's 'goblin mode' is here to stay":

"I have been lazy my entire life. I just got by in school, including college where I finished near the bottom of my class...

"... although I had superior SAT & GRE scores. I got a government job by scoring well on their exam (and had the required sheepskin). I continued to be lazy by being highly efficient. My supervisors always praised my work and considered me a top employee even though I was putting in little effort. Eventually, I retired early. When I am not wandering around museums and the streets of foreign cities, I spend my time reading and philosophysing (daydreaming). I also post comments. There's a lot more to life than work."

Writes a commenter named Paerdegat at a WaPo advice column where the question comes from a man who is absurdly disgusted with his wife because she, unlike him, is not using the extra 30 hours — gained by not commuting to work — to be "productive." The remote work for both of them is full-time — in the field of law — and both completely fulfill household chores and cooking. 

But he has "read 25 biographies, developed decent conversational skills in two foreign languages, upped my running program to the point that I am marathon-ready, and started volunteering for voter registration advocacy." 

All she does with the leftover time is read fantasy novels — "books better suited to children" — watch some TV — not crap, but History Channel documentaries — something he calls "exercise," and this thing he puts in scare quotes: "unwind."

Which character do you most identify with?

the husband

the wife

the commenter

 

pollcode.com free polls

"A Kalispell woman allegedly called the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office to complain about being on the couch and her juice was in the kitchen...."

"A woman called to report she and her fiance were 'having a little dispute about helping each other.'... Three to four dirty mattresses were spotted on the side of a road in Martin City.... A man’s friend might not be so friendly after all when they allegedly pawned a TV he left at their house.... A man was allegedly on the side of a road in Columbia Falls flailing his arms, yelling at cars and acting like he was going to 'jump into traffic.'"

From the Law Roundup at the Daily Inter Lake.

"In the United States, Black activists, writers and thinkers are among the clearest voices articulating this spiritual malaise and its solutions..."

"... perhaps because they’ve borne the brunt of capitalism more than other groups of Americans. Tricia Hersey, a performance artist and the founder of the Nap Ministry, an Atlanta-based organization... says she discovered the power of naps during a draining year of graduate school at Emory University, an experience that inspired her to bring the gospel of sleep to fellow African Americans whose enslaved and persecuted ancestors were never able to properly rest. She argues that rest is not only resistance, it is also reparation. Ms. Hersey now leads events across the country focused on the transformative power of rest, and she has influenced other Black intellectuals, including Casey Gerald, the author of the transcendent essay 'The Black Art of Escape.' In it, Mr. Gerald reflects on a year he spent in what he calls a 'disappearing act,' lying flat in Texas, ignoring the calls of friends and admirers to join them in the fray of protest politics, which he’d come to view as a sure path to self-annihilation. 'Claim your inheritance,' Mr. Gerald enjoins. 'Miss the moment. Go mad, go missing, take a nap, take the day, drop a tab. You’re free!'"

From "Work Is a False Idol" by Cassady Rosenblum — "a writer who recently quit her job as a producer at 'Here & Now,' a National Public Radio news program, and is living with her parents in West Virginia" —  (NYT).

Objectively, on the substance, this post would get my "laziness" tag, but I'm wary of connecting it to a racist stereotype. Does that mean the essay has a racism problem? Or does that reveal that the stereotype is propaganda that manipulates people into not using their power to resist?

"On Earth, you've got to do something with your life... to prove you're alive..."

"And with Joe and Kamala at the helm, you’re not going to have... to argue about them every day. It just won’t be so exhausting."

"You might be able to have a Thanksgiving dinner without having an argument.... When Joe and Kamala are in charge, they’re not going to surround themselves with hacks and lobbyists, but they’re going to appoint qualified public servants who actually care... Our democracy is not going to work if the people who are supposed to be our leaders lie every day and just make things up. And we’ve just become numb to it. We’ve just become immune to it. Every single day, fact checkers can’t keep up. And, look, this notion of truthfulness and democracy and citizenship, and being responsible, these aren’t Republican or democratic principles, they’re American principles. They’re what most of us grew up learning from our parents and our grandparents. They’re not White or Black or Latino or Asian values, they’re American values, human values, and we need to reclaim them. We have to get those values back at the center of our public life. And we can. But to do it, we’ve got to turn out like never before.... We can’t be complacent. I don’t care about the polls. There were a whole bunch of polls last time, didn’t work out, because a whole bunch of folks stayed at home and got lazy and complacent.... I love you, Philadelphia. Honk if you’re fired up, honk if you’re ready to go. Are you fired up?"

Said Barack Obama, at a rally yesterday at a drive-in in Philadelphia.

"Sooner or later you’re going to encounter these anti-American ideas about addressing racism in your workplace, on kids’ homework, or in the faculty lounge..."

"... and you can’t be fragile when confronting it. You need to have a base of knowledge about race in America that demonstrates an understanding of the enormity of the country’s sins, as well as demonstrating you’ve made an effort to inform yourself about overcoming them. You need to understand that your opponents might be employing manipulative logic to make their arguments – arguments that are fast becoming so pervasive that many people making them might readily revise their opinions once you confront them with your concerns. Already there are stories circulating that people have successfully challenged the woke racial thought police in the office and at professional organizations by arming themselves with some basic knowledge. But we can’t stop there. If we inform ourselves about the real history of race in America and engage with the good-faith arguments on both sides, we might be able coalesce around solutions and come together as Americans. It won’t be easy, but if this is what it means to 'do the work' rather than simply let ourselves be told what to think, the effort will be worth it."

From "What To Read Instead Of 'White Fragility'" by Mark Hemingway (The Federalist).

He's flipping the imprecation to "do the work," and predicts that you'll fare better if you've worked (in some other way) and are not avoiding the issue of race — being lazy, not working. And yet, I'm reading that "Whiteness" article from the National Museum of African American History & Culture and it presented the work ethic as part of the internalized aspects of white culture:



For the record, I consider it racist to assign the value of hard work to white people and leave black people on the other side (exactly where the traditional stereotype puts them). I think each of us values work and the avoidance of work in our own way, and it's fine that we do. We should be efficient and make particularized judgments about what's worthwhile, otherwise we'll lose our productive energy and languish in meetings and training sessions led by the dullest people on earth.

"We grow weary when idle"/"That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another."

An old conversation — between Boswell and Johnson — that's quoted in a 2016 post of mind called "Shhhh!"

That quote begins one of my favorite books, "An Apology for Idlers" by Robert Louis Stevenson. I've called it to your attention a few times, and I think that whenever I do, I flag 2 other books I like about idleness: "Essays in Idleness" by the Buddhist monk Kenko and "In Praise of Idleness" by Bertrand Russell.

Idleness is an important topic! And I wasn't even thinking — until I got to this sentence — about it's special applicability to our predicament in the time of coronavirus.

Here are 3 recent items about idleness:

1. "How Idleness Was an Early Form of Meditation for Ancient Humans" (Great Courses Daily): "Many researchers believe that people have historically spent a lot of time meditating, even if they didn’t call it meditation per se. We think of modern life as being much easier and more convenient than what’s historically been typical, but that’s a myth....  When food was plentiful [in ancient times], it’s estimated that people could find what they needed to sustain themselves—to feed themselves and their children—surprisingly quickly.... For most of the time that Homo sapiens has been around, we’ve naturally had a lot of down time.... '[O]ur brains are, and may always have been, built to require—or at least benefit from—a certain amount of meditation just to maintain normal function.... The meditation practice I’m suggesting isn’t about looking for a clever new way to enhance the function of your brain.'"

2. "The Secret Power of Idleness/The brain does some of its best work when we take a break" (Psychology Today): "When we are busiest, our brains are not necessarily doing very much. Conversely, when we take a break and engage in some apparently mindless pursuit like playing solitaire, walking, or shoveling snow, our problem-solving brains kick into overdrive.... Aristotle celebrated the value of leisure as a cornerstone of intellectual enlightenment. He believed that true leisure involves pleasure, happiness, and living blessedly. It is more than mere amusement and is impossible for those who must work most of the time...."

3. "Celebrating Literature’s Slacker Heroes, Idlers and Liers-In" (NYT): "By 'library of indolence' I mean novels like 'Oblomov,' Ivan Goncharov’s satire about a man who hates to leave his bed, and 'Bartleby, the Scrivener,' Herman Melville’s long short story about the clerk whose motto is 'I would prefer not to.' ... The wittiest and most profound [book]... is Tom Hodgkinson’s 2005 classic 'How to Be Idle.'..... He recommends not clicking on news radio upon waking. He nails me entirely when he writes, 'A certain type of person feels it is their duty to listen to it, as if the act of merely listening is somehow going to improve the world.'... 'The lie-in — by which I mean lying in bed awake — is not a selfish indulgence but an essential tool for any student of the art of living, which is what the idler really is. Lying in bed doing nothing is noble and right, pleasurable and productive.'"