La fin de la chaise
Apr. 10th, 2009 03:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneI finally own a relatively awesome office chair.
This isn't quite the $700 chair I had assumed I would get in another year, after I'd gone back to work and purchased slightly more important stuff (translation: I want a bigger iPod). This isn't the result of the month of research I'd done and talked about in the past.
It's just a very dang decent chair. It's got five wheels, two long arm rests, a head rest and a mesh back. It's got decent lumbar support, an adjustable seat height and recline controls that aren't just "rock or sit up straight". It also wasn't fished out of the garbage, as was the chair I just put back out on the street.
I had hoped to stave off this purchase, just like I've postponed many others. Most things only take me a few seconds to a minute before I say "I don't neeeed that now, I have enough stuff that I haven't unwrapped that would suit me, I have toys, I'm fine, I'm just in the shopping plaza to take a walk and stare at the humans."
A few days ago I was leaning back in my scrounged office chair when it made a loud click. My first thought was to get out of the chair before it collapsed. It didn't fall apart and I wasn't injured. Instead I could lean back slightly more than before and it wiggled more.
I spend enough time in that chair to know that this was a final warning. Oh sure, it still worked -- but for how long? Would I suddenly flip over? Worse yet, would I get a hydraulic piston up my ass without a safe word?
My roommate wanted to buy a desk at Ikea, so we went there on Wednesday. I wasn't certain I'd buy anything that day. Then I tried as many of the chairs as I could, got as comfy as I could and recovered from a possible lingonberry overdose. I found a couple that I liked. Then my roommate pointed out that one chair I'd liked had concave arm rests and that I'd wind up with a stress point on my arm.
I brought home a chair and put it together while we watched a couple episodes of Freaky Eaters. This is a BBC show about people that will only eat a very limited diet. A nutritionist and a therapist try to swirl the person away from a life of potato chips.
One episode we saw was very moving. A guy would only eat basic Cheddar cheese. He couldn't even eat heated foods. He was otherwise an active dude and loved riding his Seadoo or otherwise driving fast objects. He totally wanted to change, but would spit up almost anything other than his cheese.
Most of these victims have control issues going back to their childhoods. They go through some change (a horrid illness, for example) and find the only way they can rebel and take any control is to refuse food. Then they get older, can't remember the original event but remain in a state from it.
The guy in that episode made a slow but real turnaround. It was also weird seeing him try to sort things out with his estranged wife and realizing she wasn't worth the time. When they revisit him a few months later, he has progressed way beyond his original goals and can even eat with his children out in public. He found he liked vegetables, especially since they didn't need to be cooked.
Regaining control has been an issue for me. I have been letting the time I spent working third shift fade away from memory. It kept me from my friends, my hobbies, my health and my sanity. When I went away to France, I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore about working horrible hours and surviving it. I needed sunlight and the people that also awaken during it.
Now I am ready to reassert myself, as I have hibernated long enough. I shed many possessions, but the next step is to shed the fear that I'm not qualified to do stuff.
I also suspect that the only real jobs out there are on Craig's List, which is weird.
In the meantime, I've been eating a lot better and I'm sorting out my hard drive files the way I've been sorting out my physical files. Each time I free up another hard drive, an angel gets its wings -- and then winds up another dang Linux box.
I have a clean throne from which to seek a new kingdom. I can control my tiny empire, most of which involves connecting other people's empires so that they can help each other grow.
-and then we serve cake, Dante
P.S.: I really need to start posting in French. I've been working so much on my French that I don't just go to Le Monde or the Montréal Press and hope I can read an article: I actually get my news that way (it turns out there is a continent with a ton of nations on it but it rarely gets covered in the anglophone press -- Africa). I can parse random stuff without lyric sheets (not all of it, but a lot). I am getting French puns.
They don't groan at puns as much as we do. Then again, the one about the priest and the car mechanic is pretty nasty in either language.
This isn't quite the $700 chair I had assumed I would get in another year, after I'd gone back to work and purchased slightly more important stuff (translation: I want a bigger iPod). This isn't the result of the month of research I'd done and talked about in the past.
It's just a very dang decent chair. It's got five wheels, two long arm rests, a head rest and a mesh back. It's got decent lumbar support, an adjustable seat height and recline controls that aren't just "rock or sit up straight". It also wasn't fished out of the garbage, as was the chair I just put back out on the street.
I had hoped to stave off this purchase, just like I've postponed many others. Most things only take me a few seconds to a minute before I say "I don't neeeed that now, I have enough stuff that I haven't unwrapped that would suit me, I have toys, I'm fine, I'm just in the shopping plaza to take a walk and stare at the humans."
A few days ago I was leaning back in my scrounged office chair when it made a loud click. My first thought was to get out of the chair before it collapsed. It didn't fall apart and I wasn't injured. Instead I could lean back slightly more than before and it wiggled more.
I spend enough time in that chair to know that this was a final warning. Oh sure, it still worked -- but for how long? Would I suddenly flip over? Worse yet, would I get a hydraulic piston up my ass without a safe word?
My roommate wanted to buy a desk at Ikea, so we went there on Wednesday. I wasn't certain I'd buy anything that day. Then I tried as many of the chairs as I could, got as comfy as I could and recovered from a possible lingonberry overdose. I found a couple that I liked. Then my roommate pointed out that one chair I'd liked had concave arm rests and that I'd wind up with a stress point on my arm.
I brought home a chair and put it together while we watched a couple episodes of Freaky Eaters. This is a BBC show about people that will only eat a very limited diet. A nutritionist and a therapist try to swirl the person away from a life of potato chips.
One episode we saw was very moving. A guy would only eat basic Cheddar cheese. He couldn't even eat heated foods. He was otherwise an active dude and loved riding his Seadoo or otherwise driving fast objects. He totally wanted to change, but would spit up almost anything other than his cheese.
Most of these victims have control issues going back to their childhoods. They go through some change (a horrid illness, for example) and find the only way they can rebel and take any control is to refuse food. Then they get older, can't remember the original event but remain in a state from it.
The guy in that episode made a slow but real turnaround. It was also weird seeing him try to sort things out with his estranged wife and realizing she wasn't worth the time. When they revisit him a few months later, he has progressed way beyond his original goals and can even eat with his children out in public. He found he liked vegetables, especially since they didn't need to be cooked.
Regaining control has been an issue for me. I have been letting the time I spent working third shift fade away from memory. It kept me from my friends, my hobbies, my health and my sanity. When I went away to France, I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore about working horrible hours and surviving it. I needed sunlight and the people that also awaken during it.
Now I am ready to reassert myself, as I have hibernated long enough. I shed many possessions, but the next step is to shed the fear that I'm not qualified to do stuff.
I also suspect that the only real jobs out there are on Craig's List, which is weird.
In the meantime, I've been eating a lot better and I'm sorting out my hard drive files the way I've been sorting out my physical files. Each time I free up another hard drive, an angel gets its wings -- and then winds up another dang Linux box.
I have a clean throne from which to seek a new kingdom. I can control my tiny empire, most of which involves connecting other people's empires so that they can help each other grow.
-and then we serve cake, Dante
P.S.: I really need to start posting in French. I've been working so much on my French that I don't just go to Le Monde or the Montréal Press and hope I can read an article: I actually get my news that way (it turns out there is a continent with a ton of nations on it but it rarely gets covered in the anglophone press -- Africa). I can parse random stuff without lyric sheets (not all of it, but a lot). I am getting French puns.
They don't groan at puns as much as we do. Then again, the one about the priest and the car mechanic is pretty nasty in either language.
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