Reminds me of a quote my Scottish grandfather sent to me once and I cut it out and taped it to a little desk clock - “the world is your oyster but you can’t crack it on a mattress”
Nice hikkimori reference. The problem with the hurkle durkles is that they feel entitled to other people’s money. Tax workers to pay for the hurkle durkles’ student loans on useless degrees. Call mommy and daddy for subsidies. Self care means ordering Uber eats, binge watching Netflix, scrolling through TikTok, and mailing in your vote for democrats to give you more handouts all without leaving the house. At least your carbon emissions are low!
I spent a month in the hospital last year (February 2023) after a stem cell transplant (which had some complications hence the longer than usual hospitalization). While in the hospital I was exhausted all the time due to lack of good sleep (you never get good sleep in a hospital when they take your vitals every hour) and severe anemia. The emphasis on getting up and walking around was constant and despite that, I lost soooo much muscle mass in my legs. I ended up with a DVT in my leg and it took a few months before I could get back to walking a few miles a day. I was astounded at how quickly my strong body became weak and pitiful from that month of being stuck in a hospital room. I will never take the ability to get out of bed for granted again. Staying in bed or laying around and doing nothing is not self-care. It's always about avoiding something. Getting up and facing that something / doing that something is much healthier! And everyone who can do that should be grateful they can!
I read the replies, and as you can see, decided to add my own!!!
One thing I have realized is that we are often blind to our own anxieties until they start to fade. They simply manifest as how the world looks. We locate them out there, when of course it is always "in here", and that is always theoretically manageable, but practically often very far away.
And all of us, every day, have to some extent tell ourselves benign lies about the world we live in. The truth is this whole thing could fall apart in ten minutes. A nuclear war would kill most of us, and permanently alter the lives of any survivors. We know this, of course, which is one reason so many post-apocalyptic movies are so popular.
It is sane to go a bit insane over all of this. All of our past knowns, our shared sacreds, are under attack. We don't know who is going to be screaming about some new thing tomorrow, and losing their effing minds over something we weren't even thinking about. And we know, NOW, that we will be thinking "Dear God, WTF? Another thing?"
And the people screaming are doing it because they are using aggression to manage their own anxiety. Everybody is worried. Everybody is anxious. And nearly all of us are lying about it.
So personally, I get this whole thing. It's in some respects a synonym for depression, one symptom of which of course is also sleeping or staying in bed too much. I personally very much feel the madness in the air. I feel something large in the air. Our children are not OK. Our leaders are not honest. Science has been corrupted. Everything is outwardly OK--the supermarkets have just about everything you would need, as do the gas stations. We have decent freeways, access to cars, and those of us who want them have jobs of some sort. We may work a tad too much, but our lives are basically pretty easy by any reasonable standard. But still, how long will it last, under all these attacks from lunatics? That's my world, in any event. That's what I think daily.
And I will add one more note: I will often lay in bed a while after I wake up, because that is a very good time for creative work. The imagination is at a peak at the time, in which some hypnagogic content still remains, but you are alert enough not to lose it falling back to sleep. I find introspection at that time particularly useful. It's rare that I don't come away with some insight.
Actually, one more one more note: I do think most Americans suffer from having been indoctrinated to value work a bit too much. We work to work, and we feel shame when we are not working. Most of us, I think, get most of our sanity from our work, because our private lives, in an extraordinarily large number of cases, are messes. We are lonely, alienated, confused, angry. Only at work do things make sense.
But work should just be a part of our lives, not the major source of meaning in our lives. Obsessiveness may make you rich, but you will be a rich person with mental problems, and we already have enough of those.
Shout out to Mountain Goat and Beth Anderson. Thus far the two people to avoid having a knee-jerk negative political reaction to a random online trend.
There is a problem with spending too much time in bed. The name? Bed sores. Coma patients have all of these people beat. Lets not aspire to be coma patients.
Alfred Adler would say we all have the need to move from inferiority to superiority aka mastery. To go from being a helpless child to an adult with a sense of competency in life. Discouraged people however don’t engage in behaviors that benefit society. They go over to the “useless side of life” still seeking mastery but doing so in useless ways. Like being the worlds #1 Hurkle-durkle.
I think it’s a great definition for retirement! I love to hurkle durkle away a cold winter morning but only because I’ve known the opposite for decades. You can’t enjoy and appreciate something fully until you’ve experienced that which leads up to the fruits of your labor. There’s nothing wrong with an occasional mental health day off, as we used to call it, but, as my beloved Mimi used to say, hard work is its own reward.
It’s such a great pleasure to stay in bed for way too long, but much of the pleasure comes from contrast. I can’t imagine loving to do it if I did it every day.
I work 12 hour shifts at the hospital Saturday through Friday every other week (84 hours in 7 days). On my off weeks I work on the nonprofit private medical practice I’m opening, single-mother my 9yo, go to church where we both sing in the choir, play violin in a community orchestra, and practice martial arts in the evenings.
And every other Saturday (after I finish my 84 hours of work the previous Friday) I stay in bed allllllllllll day. I make a goal of seeing if I can manage to actually sleep for 12 hours. Then I order delivery breakfast and eat it in bed. Then I curl up with a book, or books, and read until I get sleepy, at which point I take a nap. Maybe I get up in there to go on a little stroll around the neighborhood or practice violin, but then it’s right back to bed.
It is *glorious.* Absolutely sublime. I never knew there was a word for my special Saturdays until “hurkle durkle” became a Thing, and it will receive no shade from me. I completely adore it. But I can’t imagine it being so amazingly pleasurable if I hadn’t just done *so much work.* I can’t even imagine *wanting* to do it otherwise.
I think the issue with so much “self care” is less any of the activities in and of themselves but that prioritizing self care creates a life that is all dessert, no meat.
Having worked with recluses, some of whom do stay in bed all day, hiding from the world, I do not recommend hurkle-durkling. It is hard to stay motivated and disciplined—welcome to the human condition—but striving to find justification for laziness or a fear of facing the world is not maturity.
Do we need to lounge occasionally, rest, have a lazy day? Sure. But not at the expense of getting chores and what needs to be done for ourselves or those we are responsible for.
You haven’t lost me yet Suzy. You make a good point.
This is an excellent article. I wonder who started demonizng the successful and why? I wonder... I wonder if this is directed at "women" or mostly at "leftist (liberal) women"? Does it matter...?
I wonder who started telling people that having families and working hard and taking responsibility was a bad thing? I wonder where that came from? I wonder if anyone ever tried to warn those people? I wonder if the the people who warned their neighbors, coworkers and friends were consistently maligned, attacked, mocked and ridiculed?
Having lived in Glasgow, Scotland, for three years in college, I can't identify with this piece. When I lived there, the term I learned was "long lie". I am gonna have a long lie (said our drunken selves after an amazing night of socializing at the pub with friends). And honestly, if I could go back to this time in my life, I would. I would skip the over abundance of alcohol. I would not skip the time with good friends, talking, laughing, living. And then the freedom and permission and ease with which we took a long lie because back them (the early 90s and I was in my early 20s), I had a lot less care and responsibility and that stage of my life had less labels and more living in the moment. And here I am at 50, I run a business, I am a Town Councilors and I have no kids and my dog passed away a bit more than 1 year ago. So as you can guess, I am busy. But also I am busy with purpose. I am not moving on the outside what I can't move on the inside like I did at 30 and 40. So there may be places where a long lie isn't laziness, but pure bliss of the space in-between moments. So I will enjoy every long lie I take even if it seems like this new term which I can't even recall!
Well one can learn to play a hurdy-gurdy while one hurkle-durkles. But if one stays in bed too long there is the risk of becoming a rolly-polly. However, if one partners with that special someone there may be more opportunities for slam-bam thank you ma'am.....or Sam as some may prefer. I know, I know this is a lot of jibber-jabber, so see you later alligator. Ta ta.
I’d write something long and witty but it is just too hard to hold my iPhone upright against my chest and raise my arm up and extend a finger to type on a tiny little keyboard as I lie here in my unwashed and barely made bed. Bye……
Reminds me of a quote my Scottish grandfather sent to me once and I cut it out and taped it to a little desk clock - “the world is your oyster but you can’t crack it on a mattress”
Nice hikkimori reference. The problem with the hurkle durkles is that they feel entitled to other people’s money. Tax workers to pay for the hurkle durkles’ student loans on useless degrees. Call mommy and daddy for subsidies. Self care means ordering Uber eats, binge watching Netflix, scrolling through TikTok, and mailing in your vote for democrats to give you more handouts all without leaving the house. At least your carbon emissions are low!
I spent a month in the hospital last year (February 2023) after a stem cell transplant (which had some complications hence the longer than usual hospitalization). While in the hospital I was exhausted all the time due to lack of good sleep (you never get good sleep in a hospital when they take your vitals every hour) and severe anemia. The emphasis on getting up and walking around was constant and despite that, I lost soooo much muscle mass in my legs. I ended up with a DVT in my leg and it took a few months before I could get back to walking a few miles a day. I was astounded at how quickly my strong body became weak and pitiful from that month of being stuck in a hospital room. I will never take the ability to get out of bed for granted again. Staying in bed or laying around and doing nothing is not self-care. It's always about avoiding something. Getting up and facing that something / doing that something is much healthier! And everyone who can do that should be grateful they can!
I read the replies, and as you can see, decided to add my own!!!
One thing I have realized is that we are often blind to our own anxieties until they start to fade. They simply manifest as how the world looks. We locate them out there, when of course it is always "in here", and that is always theoretically manageable, but practically often very far away.
And all of us, every day, have to some extent tell ourselves benign lies about the world we live in. The truth is this whole thing could fall apart in ten minutes. A nuclear war would kill most of us, and permanently alter the lives of any survivors. We know this, of course, which is one reason so many post-apocalyptic movies are so popular.
It is sane to go a bit insane over all of this. All of our past knowns, our shared sacreds, are under attack. We don't know who is going to be screaming about some new thing tomorrow, and losing their effing minds over something we weren't even thinking about. And we know, NOW, that we will be thinking "Dear God, WTF? Another thing?"
And the people screaming are doing it because they are using aggression to manage their own anxiety. Everybody is worried. Everybody is anxious. And nearly all of us are lying about it.
So personally, I get this whole thing. It's in some respects a synonym for depression, one symptom of which of course is also sleeping or staying in bed too much. I personally very much feel the madness in the air. I feel something large in the air. Our children are not OK. Our leaders are not honest. Science has been corrupted. Everything is outwardly OK--the supermarkets have just about everything you would need, as do the gas stations. We have decent freeways, access to cars, and those of us who want them have jobs of some sort. We may work a tad too much, but our lives are basically pretty easy by any reasonable standard. But still, how long will it last, under all these attacks from lunatics? That's my world, in any event. That's what I think daily.
And I will add one more note: I will often lay in bed a while after I wake up, because that is a very good time for creative work. The imagination is at a peak at the time, in which some hypnagogic content still remains, but you are alert enough not to lose it falling back to sleep. I find introspection at that time particularly useful. It's rare that I don't come away with some insight.
Actually, one more one more note: I do think most Americans suffer from having been indoctrinated to value work a bit too much. We work to work, and we feel shame when we are not working. Most of us, I think, get most of our sanity from our work, because our private lives, in an extraordinarily large number of cases, are messes. We are lonely, alienated, confused, angry. Only at work do things make sense.
But work should just be a part of our lives, not the major source of meaning in our lives. Obsessiveness may make you rich, but you will be a rich person with mental problems, and we already have enough of those.
Shout out to Mountain Goat and Beth Anderson. Thus far the two people to avoid having a knee-jerk negative political reaction to a random online trend.
There is a problem with spending too much time in bed. The name? Bed sores. Coma patients have all of these people beat. Lets not aspire to be coma patients.
Alfred Adler would say we all have the need to move from inferiority to superiority aka mastery. To go from being a helpless child to an adult with a sense of competency in life. Discouraged people however don’t engage in behaviors that benefit society. They go over to the “useless side of life” still seeking mastery but doing so in useless ways. Like being the worlds #1 Hurkle-durkle.
I think it’s a great definition for retirement! I love to hurkle durkle away a cold winter morning but only because I’ve known the opposite for decades. You can’t enjoy and appreciate something fully until you’ve experienced that which leads up to the fruits of your labor. There’s nothing wrong with an occasional mental health day off, as we used to call it, but, as my beloved Mimi used to say, hard work is its own reward.
It’s such a great pleasure to stay in bed for way too long, but much of the pleasure comes from contrast. I can’t imagine loving to do it if I did it every day.
I work 12 hour shifts at the hospital Saturday through Friday every other week (84 hours in 7 days). On my off weeks I work on the nonprofit private medical practice I’m opening, single-mother my 9yo, go to church where we both sing in the choir, play violin in a community orchestra, and practice martial arts in the evenings.
And every other Saturday (after I finish my 84 hours of work the previous Friday) I stay in bed allllllllllll day. I make a goal of seeing if I can manage to actually sleep for 12 hours. Then I order delivery breakfast and eat it in bed. Then I curl up with a book, or books, and read until I get sleepy, at which point I take a nap. Maybe I get up in there to go on a little stroll around the neighborhood or practice violin, but then it’s right back to bed.
It is *glorious.* Absolutely sublime. I never knew there was a word for my special Saturdays until “hurkle durkle” became a Thing, and it will receive no shade from me. I completely adore it. But I can’t imagine it being so amazingly pleasurable if I hadn’t just done *so much work.* I can’t even imagine *wanting* to do it otherwise.
I think the issue with so much “self care” is less any of the activities in and of themselves but that prioritizing self care creates a life that is all dessert, no meat.
Oh no! Another exotic name for doing nothing - nothing useful, creative, generous, or kind. Just more “it’s all about me.”
Hurkle Durkle, which loosely translates to “lazy ass”
Having worked with recluses, some of whom do stay in bed all day, hiding from the world, I do not recommend hurkle-durkling. It is hard to stay motivated and disciplined—welcome to the human condition—but striving to find justification for laziness or a fear of facing the world is not maturity.
Do we need to lounge occasionally, rest, have a lazy day? Sure. But not at the expense of getting chores and what needs to be done for ourselves or those we are responsible for.
You haven’t lost me yet Suzy. You make a good point.
This is an excellent article. I wonder who started demonizng the successful and why? I wonder... I wonder if this is directed at "women" or mostly at "leftist (liberal) women"? Does it matter...?
I wonder who started telling people that having families and working hard and taking responsibility was a bad thing? I wonder where that came from? I wonder if anyone ever tried to warn those people? I wonder if the the people who warned their neighbors, coworkers and friends were consistently maligned, attacked, mocked and ridiculed?
You reap what you sow.
Now, let these leftists rot.
Having lived in Glasgow, Scotland, for three years in college, I can't identify with this piece. When I lived there, the term I learned was "long lie". I am gonna have a long lie (said our drunken selves after an amazing night of socializing at the pub with friends). And honestly, if I could go back to this time in my life, I would. I would skip the over abundance of alcohol. I would not skip the time with good friends, talking, laughing, living. And then the freedom and permission and ease with which we took a long lie because back them (the early 90s and I was in my early 20s), I had a lot less care and responsibility and that stage of my life had less labels and more living in the moment. And here I am at 50, I run a business, I am a Town Councilors and I have no kids and my dog passed away a bit more than 1 year ago. So as you can guess, I am busy. But also I am busy with purpose. I am not moving on the outside what I can't move on the inside like I did at 30 and 40. So there may be places where a long lie isn't laziness, but pure bliss of the space in-between moments. So I will enjoy every long lie I take even if it seems like this new term which I can't even recall!
Well one can learn to play a hurdy-gurdy while one hurkle-durkles. But if one stays in bed too long there is the risk of becoming a rolly-polly. However, if one partners with that special someone there may be more opportunities for slam-bam thank you ma'am.....or Sam as some may prefer. I know, I know this is a lot of jibber-jabber, so see you later alligator. Ta ta.
Can we get some Hurkle Durkle merch? Preferably PJs
Yeah...that extra hour in bed is ironically spent on this publication. This and chess.com
I’d write something long and witty but it is just too hard to hold my iPhone upright against my chest and raise my arm up and extend a finger to type on a tiny little keyboard as I lie here in my unwashed and barely made bed. Bye……