So, I redecorated my office a little bit today. I placed my Herman Miller office chair that my husband gave me with a leather easy chair I bought years ago. His idea behind the office chair was really nice. My husband loves his. He values his so much that he gave me the better of the two chairs so that I could fall in love with it as much as he was in love with his. He just raves about its ergonomic qualities and how it can be fitted to each person and that it was “worth every penny.” I’m sure he believes it.
Me? The chair, if I raised it up properly to fit up to my desk so I could type easily made my feet dangle, creating pressure points on my hips. If I put it down just far enough that my feet touched, I couldn’t type properly and it cut off the circulation at my knees causing my feet to go number. If I used the little foot stool my husband gave me to rest my feet on, I couldn’t get comfortable in the chair. The arm rests were always in the way. And at no point – regardless of setting, did the small of my back make it anywhere near the ergonomic back of the chair. I’m just awkwardly shaped. At five feet two inches tall with a long torso and super short legs, there isn’t an office chair designed to fit me. It wasn’t the chair’s fault. It was me.
So, what does fit me? My little leather easy chair.
Not only does this char fit me, it hugs me. I can sit in it with my legs crossed under me and its comfortable. I can toss a leg over the arm rest and it’s comfortable. I can pull up that little footstool he made to help the other chair fit comfortable and stretch out all evening “vedge” style and it’s comfortable. I can sit normally with feet on the group and it’s comfortable. It’s just plain comfortable.
So, I changed out the chairs. I imagine that the chair will now become kitty fodder for jumping up onto my desk since Twister has claimed my desk as his cat perch, but I’m okay with it. Most of the time, it will be used by me, in my office (i.e. Twister’s bedroom) and for the purpose of being comfortable while I work. And with a four-and-a-half hour zoom call scheduled both Thursday and Friday, I’m gonna need it.
However, the symbolism of this move isn’t quite lost on me. I changed out the super professional, business chair for the comfy, relaxing chair. Even the name of the chair – an easy chair – illustrates its real purpose. The fact that it’s in my office just illustrates my point even more. I may need to work but comfort is my priority. As I make that slight downshift in 70 days (but who’s counting??), the easy chair will be with me for my next transition. The chair is part of the symbolism of working less and striking a healthier work/life balance. A year into the pandemic and as we slowly ease out of the emergency phase of it, the chair symbolizes my renewed emphasis on putting even more life into that work/life balance.
Of course, this comes at a time where I will literally work every day for 13 days and have a very busy professional stint coming up where I’ll be back travelling again. But after that? I’ll be taking it easy again… perhaps in my easy chair. And I’ll be ready for July 1st.
I had a chat with a colleague today who is considering reducing her time and she wanted to know my impressions. I shared with her what I now share with you. Working part time and ultimately at even less part time was never about the work or the compensation. Moreover, it wasn’t about some deep-seated burnout that had finally washed me up and washed me ashore. Instead, it was a deliberate move where I still valued my professional life and the contributions I could make, but I couched that professional life vs. personal goals. I had done the internal math, you see, and I realized that while I still valued many things, the specific weight each item had to me had changed significantly. I valued simple moments with my husband and kitties; making memories with my sisters and my besties. I valued lunch out with my best friend, the time and availability to pick my niece up from college, date nights with my husband, the opportunity to be creative professionally while working from home… . The list could go on. But when I did the evaluation, I realized that I now knew something about myself that would make it impossible to go back to the old me. I had changed and now I knew I had changed. The only way I was going to enjoy life would be to embrace that change, thank God for being so fortunate that I could make the change, and then to live out that change with gratitude.
The easy chair symbolizes that gratitude and the juxtaposition of a professional life that is now subjugated to my personal life vs. the other way around. And it also embraces what it took to get here. I spent my 20s living at home because I couldn’t afford an apartment and to pay off my student loan debt. In my 30s, I worked whatever extra hours I could – often for no extra pay – to prove that I could be relied upon and could do the work. In the meantime, I saved every nickel I could and paid off every cent of my school and personal debt. In my late 30s, I started to reap success but that success drove me through my 40s when I became a responsibility junkie. I lived for the extra burden, the additional stress, that extra pressure.
Finally, at 49, I had achieved more than I ever thought I could achieve professionally. But I looked back and didn’t see much in the way of a personal life. That I had actually managed to meet, fall in love and marry my husband is almost a miracle and likely took his near-death accident to shake me up. That I had already lost one parent and was on the brink of losing another was also weighing on me. That my nephew was growing up and he didn’t really know me was a third. That my sisters admitted to not inviting me to things because they didn’t think I’d actually take them up on the invitation as I had declined too many times in the past. That my friendships had largely been nurtured on one side only and that I was lucky anyone still kept me on their friends list. With all of that professional success, I realized that the only reason why I had had any personal success was because others had fostered me.
Today, I’m riding that easy chair into the remaining years of my life. Oh, I still intend to get up and be active. But these days, it’s just as likely to be to go for a hike or to take a yoga class as it is to pull a 15-hour day to finish a work project. I’ll keep on building my spreadsheets, but they’ll be split between garden production and annual revenue projections and between funding renovations and provider productivity models.
Yes, it’s time to again recommit to turning the dial marked at one extreme “work” and the other extreme “life” a little more towards “life”. The dial slightly favors “life” these days and it feels so good. Just like this easy chair is giving me a hug while I write down these thoughts, the dial leaning towards life reminds me of the good choices I’m now so grateful I can make.
I’ve got an easy chair in my office pulled up to my desk. So what? I’m comfortable.
The Yuppie Homesteader 