My Desk Chair
To someone who writes there is nothing more important than a desk chair. I think Philip Roth later on wrote standing up (he had back problems), but most of us cradle our glorious glutes for long periods of time in a device that must provide comfort and proper support. Writers thereby violate every orthopedic warning about sitting too long and the need for exercise.
Well, so what? The grand truths that emerge from this exercise in non-exercise come from gluteal contentment. No one should contemplate the cost, mental and physical, of sitting in an ill-fitting chair. If your butt don’t fit, your brain will quit.
I got this old Herman Miller chair when I was working at Lexis/Nexis in Charlottesville in 2002. I was doing some editing at home and asked the maintenance man if he had a chair I could buy. He gave me one free, and it was so good I brought it with me to Mexico. I’ve had it recovered and repadded a couple times. It has become part of my life.
Seven Reasons to Make Only Short Visits to the U.S.
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- Racial dementia
- The cost of everything
- The potency of non-vaxers
- Chick-fil-A
- The MAGA madness
- Changes in the cultural life of New York
- Being associated with mindless exploits like the war in Afghanistan (though expats cannot absolve themselves from U.S. policies).
I worked for five years using a standing desk. Then my back got better, and I sat back down. Might I be inviting a relapse? Perhaps, but it’s oh so fine with butt comfortably affixed to the seat, firmly anchored to the floor.
When I moved to Guam a couple of months ago, I bought a new desk chair, which, like you, I spend hours sitting atop every day to write. It was delivered and I set up my writing space with the chair, a new desk and a new printer and began to type away. Suddenly my back went into spasms. I was certain it was the chair. Every time I tried to get up, the sharp, twisting pain began anew. I couldn’t walk upright. The mere act of taking a step was unbearable. Forget about going up and down stairs. It took nearly three weeks of aspirin, doing backbends over my Pilates ball, and bed rest, but the spasms finally eased up and eventually stopped altogether. Then I realized it wasn’t the chair at all; it was weeks of lifting and toting, packing and unpacking boxes and luggage that sent those muscles into paroxysms of pain. I was quite glad I didn’t need to return the chair and try to find another one. That would have been a pain the ass.