My new office chair
Is a yoga ball, bright blue.
Why, you might ask, have I traded my deluxe, executive, pleather arm chair for a ribbed rubber ball?
Posture, my friend. I love my big, comfy arm chair, but all this laptop writing has me becoming the Hunchback, Outre Dame. Particularly on the days I eschew contact lens, I found myself increasingly slumped over the keyboard, drawn in to the flickering light of my work. Poor posture brings with it so many companions, including the nagging of loved ones.
So, off to the "Big 5" discount sports store, and the purchase of the blue yoga ball.
I have used them at the gym, and like them for stretching and such, but had (a) never sat on one for long, and (b) never pumped one up with the sad-ass little foot pump (seemingly made by hasbro or fischer price to inflate the tires on the little fischer price school bus) provided by the yoga ball company.
I have several things to report, dear reader, if you are contemplating this switch yourself.
First, Richard and I spent 30-40 minutes pumping up the darned ball. The f.p. bus could have gone to Hoboken and back on our air.
Second, you don't so much swivel on a yoga ball, or wear a skirt. I work using two keyboards and three screens (speeds up everything) and am accustomed to swiveling back and forth between the keyboards. My current direction changes are accompished with a fluid system of moves and grunts made famous by East German gymnasts. The squat and swivel has little in common with the bend and snap, just so you know.
Third, the ball is high maintenace. After a couple of 8-10 hour days, it needs a fresh infusion of air. I'm getting a better work out pumping up the ball than I ever did trying pilates with it.
Fourth, my posture seems to be improving. Score one for the big blue ball.
Now pardon me while switch to the other keyboard. Schnell!
This puzzling piece
I’m looking again at this big, odd puzzle piece. It is frayed and discoloured, creased from being forced into the picture puzzle repeatedly in different ways.
Its shape no longer makes sense to me – I don’t see how it fits. The image runs continuously, like sidewalk chalk in a thunderstorm, and I can’t see how the whole picture develops because of where and how this piece is located.
I won an award for writing last week, and I’m not sure what to do with it. The award brings in its train this large, confusing puzzle piece: my self as writer. Process, motive, product, identity.
It’s not the Nobel I hoped for as a child, when I dreamt of becoming the next “great American writer.” A Hemingway or Fitzgerald for my generation. As that dream jostled shoulders with becoming an astronaut or perhaps a sports star, I aged a year or two and realized I was called to save the world (or at least America) through journalism. The award changed to a Pulitzer, as I dreamt of becoming the Woodward AND Bernstein of my generation.
Through a series of bumps and turns along the road, I became a writer. I even wrote for the Wall St. Journal, and something inside me rested. There, I thought, I’ve done it. I wrote a successful piece for a major gray lady, they asked me to write again at a nice price point, I’m that person I always wanted to be – a good newspaperman. (No gender implied) Not only had I received the recognition of my peers, my skill and experience had reached the point where I had peers, was accepted as one of them.
But that wasn’t the answer. If newspaperman was the look and shape of the piece, why do I live it part-time? Why do I rest in knowing what I can do, rather than living it out gloriously? I recognize that it isn’t fear – of failure, success, talent, lack of talent – it is something about the ill-fitting puzzle piece.
Writing is the lynchpin of my livelihood. I am employed for other things, too, have other talents and skills (num chuck skills, bow hunting skills). But writing is the Big Kahuna. More than that, writing is itself the continuing narrative in my life. I can’t recall a time in my life when I didn’t think something along the lines of “I’d like to write….” Whatever, a newspaper column, a mystery novel, a book of poems, a sermon.
This puzzle piece isn’t about a kind of writing, or even the drive to write. The ill-fitting piece is connected to identity. What does writing mean to me? Why do I do it and yet not do it? Why do I start novels and not finish them? Why do I write for other people yet not much for myself? And what about this blog?
If you could see the underbelly of my blog (I think they call it the “dashboard”) you would see more unpublished drafts than posted entries. It’s not that they’re hard to write, or not well-written, it’s that I didn’t choose to finish them. When I spend so much of my day writing for my living, the “me” writing of the blog falls by the wayside. Neither inclination nor time to sit at the computer – it’s time to see Richard, go to the gym, walk the dog, anything rather than another few minutes sitting at my desk.
So really, what about this blog? It is the closest I get to actually writing for myself. And the puzzle piece remains maddeningly obscure. There is something crucial here. If I can figure this out, I will solve something important about who and how I am, about what comes next and why.
Here is a clue to part of it, if only I can figure it out. The recent, second pet food recall is the exact food we feed Bryn. Alarm, dismay, vets, new food. A 76-year old Holocaust survivor gave his life to save his students during the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.
What will my next blog be about? My new big blue ball.
