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The Nation’s Katrina Vanden Heuvel reviews The Importance of Being Lazy: In Praise of Play, Leisure and Vacations, by Al Gini, Routledge Books:

We live in a society, Gini observes, in which modern workers talk about sleeping the same way that hungry people talk about food, and where Americans are now working more than ever before. (Perversely, we allow downtime for maintenance and repair of machinery but not for employees.)

As Joe Robinson, a former adventure-travel magazine editor, says, “Americans’ most hazardous work-related illness is vacation deficit disorder or vacation starvation.”

See also Joe’s AlterNet article, Vacation Starvation.

Because my wacko “work ethic” interferes with my ability to schedule time off, I’m currently like a dehydrated man stumbling across the desert, hallucinating about the possibility of having four days in a row off work. It goes without saying that I’m not thinking as clearly as when I’m rested. And I’m a hell of a lot grumpier.

Yet my enculturated self-assessment has continued to be that I’m therefore a wuss. It’s nice to be reminded that longing for days off, for time to unwind, is instead a valid — and indeed imperative — desire.

This much is clear: Being angry and tired is no way to live.