5 Ways to Inexpensively Create a Standing Computer Station—and Add Years to Your Life

Long before I heard “sitting is the new smoking,” I knew I was killing myself. As a fiction writer, I’d sit for hours, immersed in a story with no sense of time. When I did take breaks (to make a cup of tea or hit the bathroom), I’d stretch and do breath work, but I still had to go to a massage therapist to work out the kinks. But as time went on and the computer became even more of a shackle with the internet, webinars, and research, I found my muscles not as easy to use in dance class and my ability to stretch shortening.

When I started having trouble rising from a sitting position, I knew I had to change my habits, so I looked online where I found a number of great tables that converted to standing, but were too expensive.

The solution came when I started writing in a Barnes & Noble cafe and moved from the short tables to the tall. I found I could stand, on and off, for the five hours I was there. That gave me ideas, and now I stand and work more than I sit. Standing also reminds me to stretch and breath and move. An added benefit is I don't hunch over.

Here are five ways you, too, can create standing stations or find places to write with standing capability.

CAFES
I often write in cafes as it takes me away from phones, laundry, dog, husband, etc. The first photo is of me standing at one of the B&N tables. The second photo is at Cafe Vero, an old Victorian house, where Sonny the owner put in a shelf along a hallway and included a strip of plugins. The chairs are high, the counter just right for standing.

At B&N

Cafe Vero

Tip: start out standing for a short, comfortable time period and increase as you get used to it.

REGULAR TABLES
Everyone has a regular table at home. 
I often attend writers retreats at Oregon Writers Colony’s Colonyhouse. Because I was desperate to stand while working, I first stacked oversized books from their library on the dining table for a pedestal effect, but the books were cumbersome and not sturdy.

Then I remembered my mom’s lap desk we’d stored at the house. This is the easiest conversion as it’s portable, folds up, and goes with me to Colonyhouse. Bed Bath & Beyond carry them for around $12-15. An additional feature of this lap desk is that the top adjusts for a slanted surface, perfect for writing with pen and paper, say for example, when you’re editing hard copy or writing in a journal. Also works when reading a magazine or book.

Tip: to make standing easier on your feet and back, buy a gel pad for the floor. You can find these in the kitchen section of many stores as they are usually used on tile floors in front of a sink or food prep area. Mine is a GelPro.

EXISTING SHELVES OR COUNTERS
I fortunately have a shelf in my writing room that’s perfect for standing and gives me a beautiful view out the window of our front yard. I use this when I’m working on my laptop and don’t need two monitors. Almost any shelf can be used like this if one is available. 

A shelf under a window can easily be constructed out of shelf brackets and a board. At your neighborhood home improvement store, they may even have something already available. Look for, say for example, a shelf that normally holds potted plants. Or ask for help on something that could easily be anchored to the wall.

REGULAR COMPUTER TABLE
If you’re working at a regular computer table, one that has a back shelf for an external monitor and a pull out extension for a keyboard, you’re in luck. This type of computer table is usually  inexpensive to buy or can be found at second hand stores like St. Vincent dePaul. I often need to use both my laptop and an external monitor when creating a blog, doing research on my novel, or watching a webinar while taking notes.
 

When I'm sitting

When I'm standing

I was at a loss, at first, as to how to convert this area for standing. But then I thought that, if I had a way to raise my laptop on the pullout shelf, I could stand. Unfortunately, the lap desk was too big for the keyboard-size pullout, and piling books would be too heavy, BUT if I had a smaller version of the lap desk that would fit the pullout shelf, I could make it work.

With my husband’s help, I drew up dimensions for what looks like a little footstool, and my husband made it in his shop. It’s even a bit fancier than what I’d asked for, but if you have a handyman or woman around who can cut out plain shapes and screw them together, you can do this, too.

As you can see in the photo, I use my laptop on the pullout with the mini-table, and I change the external monitor’s slant so it slants upward. Now I can see both monitors while standing, although I have to use my laptop keyboard instead of the ergonomic.

Tip: To make up for not being able to use my ergonomic keyboard, I found a great accessory that helps with my hand position and keeps my laptop from overheating. Made by Road Tools, the Podium CoolPad goes with me everywhere. It adjusts in height and swivels, letting you use it slanted up or down. At the B&N tables, which are high, I use it slanted down so I don’t crimp my hands.

OTHER POSSIBILITIES
Search websites for "standing computer stations." I’m not familiar with this site, BizChair, but they offer this inexpensive laptop table that’s portable and moves. My only concern would be the rollers causing it to move, something that I wouldn’t want, but might be OK if the rollers locked or the table was on carpet.

If you like your standing station solid and made of wood, podiums, like the type used in classes or for presentations or even churches, are often the right height for a laptop. They also usually have a nook for storing small things, something I need when working as I usually need pen and paper and my cellphone. (I use my cellphone for a timer as it keeps me aware of how long I’ve been writing and standing.) If you frequent second hand shops, ask the owner to keep an eye out for a podium or computer desk and to call you if one comes in.

Drafting tables or graphic design tables, although large, can be adjusted to a standing height. I don't think they’re as popular as they used to be because most drafting and design are done on computers, so it’s possible there are a number of them out there no longer in use. Maybe a school or college would be worth checking out?

Don’t forget your friends and family. Let them know what you're looking for, either via Facebook or email. Check sites like Craigslist. If you have a friend who works in wood, maybe a swap is in order.

A panorama of my writing room

Tip:  I bought my Mac ergonomic split keyboard from the folks at The Human Solution and their service is beyond compare. They sell amazing desks and chairs, too. Even for my simple questions about a keyboard, they responded quickly and checked on me after they responded. Someday, when my ship comes in, I’ll buy a set-up from them.

ONE LAST SUGGESTION
Keep moving! I love to dance and my body loves me for it. I keep a few YouTube videos for taking a break. Since I’m already standing, it’s easy to play one and move for ten minutes. My feet always say thank you!

I Love Zumba: One of my Favorite YouTube Channels

WHY SITTING WILL TAKE YEARS OFF YOUR LIFE
If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about sitting, this article explains the research behind the perils of sitting for long stretches of time.

7 Ways a Sedentary Lifestyle is Killing You

Sitting will kill you isn't exactly a happy message. But just as with the days when we used to smoke, ignorance is not bliss. So I leave you with this.

Keep dancing, keep writing!
Hugs,
Valerie

What’s next on Gobsmacked? A peek at my writing life and a giveaway, with an emphasis on Paris.

Different New Year Resolution & Why Writing Makes You Healthier

Did you know that of those who make resolutions (45% of us) only 8% successfully achieve them. For more fun facts and statistics click on this link:

New Year Resolution Statistics and Fun Facts

THE POWER OF IMAGES
 
This year, I found a different way to approach resolutions. In my Christmas stocking, Santa left my annual  Marilyn Monroe calendar. (Isn't he a sweetie to remember what I want?) When I saw January's photo of the great MM, I knew how I would use the image.

Look at that expression! All joy and hopefulness. I'm using that image for my 2015 emotional rudder. She’s lit up and gorgeous, isn’t she?

TO MAKE NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS OR NOT?

Ok, some of you feel compelled to make resolutions. I understand. If so, read this post. I think it will help. Oh, and btw, it's ok to change your resolutions, refine them, ditch them, or even map them out over time. Whatever works. Just remember: be good to yourself, be kind, be reasonable. Ask yourself, would you want your son or daughter or mother or father to make resolutions like yours? Can you really achieve that? Or do you need to break that massive resolution (Publish a novel!) down into doable parts (write a chapter a month).

Resolutions Best Served with Humor

WRITING TO FEEL BETTER? YOU BET! PLUS, WRITE TO HEAL FASTER. NO KIDDING!

For those of you who don’t consider yourselves writers, I have news for you. Maybe you should try it. Not for publication, heaven help you, but to increase your life span and improve mental health.
   
In a 2005 study on the emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing, researchers found that just 15-20 minutes of writing three to five times over the course of the four-month study was enough to make a difference.

Another study proved that wounds healed faster and cancer patients improved the quality of their life. Here’s a link to one article about the studies:
Science Shows Writers Have a Serious Advantage Over the Rest of Us

Grab one of those lovely journals or, if you hate messing up a lovely journal, a pad of lined paper. Dabble, scribble, pen your thoughts, your dreams, the ideas that you never want anyone else to see. You’ll be amazed when you let go of that perfectionist streak that keeps you from being messy. Face it! Thoughts are messy.

When you’re not worrying about what other people think about your writing, you don’t have to contain, perfect, or edit what you write. Just gloriously stream-of-consciousness get it down on paper. Or in the sand, on a wall (yours preferably), or across a roll of brown wrapping paper. I’ve written on napkins. (No to phones or laptops. You have to connect directly with pen, crayon, or pencil with any other surface.)

Wow. Doesn’t that feel good?

WINNERS OF NADINE GORDIMER & PD JAMES NOVELS

Congrats to Tonya Rice who won the Nadine Gordimer collection Life Times  and to Judith Watt who won the detective collection that includes PD James. What a great way to start the new year!
Hugs to you all,
Valerie

Coming Up! 
Sitting is the New Smoking: How to convert your writing space for a healthier you

My Disappearance

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I have always disappeared in one way or another. The history’s there; I just had to write this blog to discover it and understand why. 

My family lived in New Hampshire in a small ranch house across the street from Lake Winnisquam. I shared a bedroom with my sister who is six years younger. My brother, two years younger had his own room. The walls were thin, the commotion pretty constant, and finding privacy almost impossible. Dad used to tease me about spending so much time in the bathroom, the only room where no one barged in or bothered me unless it was an emergency.

I first disappeared into a typical pre-teen refuge, burrowing down after bedtime under my blanket where I would read or write in my diary by penlight with one ear bud plugged into my transistor radio. Even though I had school the next day I would stay up until one or two in the morning, leaving my parents dumbfounded as to why, when in the morning, I was so miserable to get out of bed. Sometimes my dad resorted to pulling the pillow out from under my head and yanking back the covers. One time he sprinkled my face with cold water. My escape was discovered one night when I fell asleep, the transistor radio cord unplugged, and rock-‘n’-roll woke my parents.

That was around the time the Beatles took over my life and I soon disappeared into a fantasy world with three other friends. We formed a secret club, each of us becoming “the bird” of our favorite Beatle and writing stories about our “luv” and then exchanging them. That only lasted until one of the parents caught Ringo’s bird passing a rather risqué story to John’s bird. We had to disband. After that, I didn’t dare write stories.

Next, I disappeared into my diary, filling it with a teenage angst pot of longing for love and someone to understand me, a place to help me figure out what to do with classmate troubles and old-fashioned, strict parents.

Then the summer after turning fourteen, I wrote in my diary that I’d fallen in love.

Because we lived on the opposite side of the road from the lake, we had to use the right-of-way at the west end to go swimming. That summer I met and fell for a boy from Boston who was there with his family vacationing in one of the summer cabins. His name was Bruce, but his cousin called him “Punk,” as I would. To my astonishment this handsome lad liked me. I kept him a secret as my dad thought all boys from Boston were “bad seeds.” Punk and I would meet and hang out at the right-of-way during the day and a few times we met in the evening to be alone. I wore peddle-pushers and a mod satin shirt with puff sleeves and twenty-five tiny buttons down the front. I wasn’t ready for the heavy petting. I only wanted to kiss him, and those buttons kept me safe.

After Punk returned to Boston without conquering that blouse, a few letters followed, but soon my first love faded away. My parents never saw the letters as I brought in the mail every day, so I was safe from discovery, or so I thought.

One night at dinner, Dad asked about the boy from Boston.

I can’t remember what I said, but I must have asked him how he knew, and he said, “You shouldn’t leave your diary out and open on your desk.”

I waited for some kind of punishment while I went from fear of discovery (Oh, my god, what had I written? What had he read?) to anger at this breach of my privacy. (What gave him the right to read my diary? And how could it have been open on my desk? I always lock it and hide it away.)

I don’t know what happened to that diary. I wish I had it now. After that, I only wrote notes to my girlfriends, poems, and school reports. For my escape, I started drawing and painting instead.

When the fights with my dad increased, I would retreat to the right-of-way and sit under the old tree where Punk and I made out. The roots that protruded above ground held me between them and I would lose myself in the cry of loons, the twinkle of lights from cabins across the lake, the smell of bar-b-ques, and the accompanying laughter and voices of other families that drifted to me over the water’s dark surface. I often took a book and could stay there for hours.

The day after my father committed suicide, I disappeared to the right-of-way, scaring my mother. But that house was too chaotic and filled with confusion, shame and grief. I needed to be alone, to cry, to settle my head, body and soul so I could return and carry on, although my heart would be damaged for a long time.

Life continued and changed many times, and so did my reason for and avenue of disappearing. Whenever life became too noisy and stressful, whenever I needed to escape trying times—the fear of moving to a new land three-thousand miles from home, the loneliness of being that far away with a three year old, divorcing an abusive first husband, the craziness of an out-of-control seventies and drug culture—I would lock the door of my house, hang up a do not disturb sign and paint or draw while listening to music. For days, I would do this, often having to tell those who stopped by, “Yes, sorry, that sign does mean you,” even when it was a new friend.

And here in the writing of this blog is where a memory brought an epiphany.

Kippy, a blue and green parakeet, was my first pet. I think I was around ten or eleven. He’d ride on my shoulder, poop on my cousin’s blonde flattop, repeat a whistle I taught him, and generally make everyone laugh. I fed him regularly, cleaned out his cage, did my best, which I admit, being a kid, probably wasn’t up to adult standards.

One day, after school, either my mom or dad forgot to bring home birdseed. Knowing that kids often don’t give their parents enough heads-up time about these things, I probably waited until the last minute to tell them I needed birdseed.

I walked to the local market and bought wild birdseed, the only kind they had. Just before dinner, as mom was cooking and dad was reading the paper at the kitchen table, Kippy started to choke. I took him from his cage. A sunflower seed was caught in his throat. I yelled for my mom and dad, raced to the kitchen with him in my hands, crying, as I watched my bird struggling and falling down. Mom continued to cook, dad read his paper. They looked over, but by the time they responded, Kippy was dead. I think I remember someone saying, "It was only a bird." Maybe not, but I heard it in my heart.

Something lodged in me that day, something that equates with how it feels to have something dying in me. I tried to feed my parakeet so it wouldn't starve, and I had the wrong food, so Kippy died. No one from the outside helped. And that’s what brought me to this conclusion as to why I disappear.

I believe that when creative people are threatened with the outcome of being a “starving artist,” it’s a way to discourage us from taking hold of our creative life. (My dad: “You are not going to be a starving artist; you will go to college to be a teacher, nurse or secretary.”) If you’re not being productive in the traditional sense, when you’re seen as selfish or self indulgent because you want to follow your art, your passion, then you're gifted a sense of guilt.

The real threat, however, is being starved of time, freedom and the opportunity to create. The real threat is not taking care of our true selves. The real threat is listening to that inner “guilt pusher” that says you should be doing something else.

In the past six months I have cracked a rib, had oral surgery, helped plan a big party for my mom’s 90^th birthday, gone to that party in Florida, returned home to the worst sinus infection I’d ever had, and during this time I had to make a decision: while I healed from these various health issues, I could concentrate on writing my novel or continue to take time from that writing and blog.

I took care of myself. I met with a few friends, but stayed home most of the time and was as quiet as I could be as I worked on my novel. I had breakthroughs. I had a-ha moments. I held myself in my hands and removed that sunflower seed. I fed myself the right food.

And the irony was, when I tried to blog in November, the universe slapped me silly. My blog feed would not work. No matter what I did, I could not get Feedburner to send to my email recipients. I didn't need a clearer message. I went back to work on my novel.

Since then, life has allowed a little time, and I switched my blog email feed to a reliable one. 

Hopefully, for those of you out there who have had a rough time lately—and I’ve read and heard many of your stories—I hope this brings some kind of epiphany for you, too. Even if you are not an artist or writer, you have a creative soul. We all do. 

Last year in January, astrologer Johanna Mitchell said about 2012, “It's a great year if you’re going to change. It’s not such a good year if you can’t find inspiration in chaos.”

My discovery makes me wonder if others out there have found themselves “disappearing,” or retreating, or whatever name you put on it. I wonder if you found your creative soul or true north in all that chaos and if you took the time to feed what was starving.

So much of our time is spent in trying to figure out what to do when we really know all along what we need; for some reason it seems counter-intuitive to care for ourselves. That’s when I go back to the context of “starving artist.” It all depends on who you’re listening to.

Hugs to all,

Val

Other blog posts that you might enjoy:

Enemies of the Art Part II--Psychic Vampires

Kristen Lamb's Blog

A Brain Scientist's Take on Writing

"Author Blogging: You're Doing It Wrong"

I think blogging is a wast of time.

 

Procrastinating Writers

"Get Rid of "Should" Once and for All"

The Intrinsic Writer

"They Call Me the Wanderer"

If your comment won't post, email me at ValinParis (at) earthlink (dot) net. I'll post it for you.