Ok, so it’s really just my desk. I have been toying with the idea for years to raise my desk into a standing desk, but have struggled with how to do it and make it look nice. I finally decided to go the cheap route…for now, just to try it. So, with $16 in cinder blocks, some wood, and my car jack, I was able to lift my desk and put cinder blocks under it. A few days into it and I love it. I feel more free and already feel more energy just from standing.
So, here is the short litany of reasons I’ve considered for doing this:to increase energy (sitting for long periods makes me feel tired and slow); maybe improve my posture (I have a bad habit of slouching and hunching, and I’ve heard standing more can improve that); health (so much of what I have read and heard is that we can burn more calories just from standing more!); and it’s just kinda cool, though I’m told by a few people already it feels like they are walking up to a judge’s bench (not the image I was hoping for).
Though I have heard that a standing desk can help with a bad back, I have not suffered from a bad back…until I lifted 24 cinder blocks at Home Depot as I was buying them for this project. Now I have a sore back, and at one point there was a sharp pain and not a good sound…pretty sure I pulled something. Saturday night I could hardly move. By Sunday it was better, and each day is getting better (thank you for your concern).
If all goes well the next few weeks, I will probably invest in a drafting chair (a high chair of sorts) so I can sit when I want to. And if I continue, I will have to get with some of my engineering and woodworking buddies to create something more esthetically pleasing than cinder blocks and left over scraps of wood (and yes, I already have an idea of what I’d like to try).
Are any of you experimenting with raised desks or other ways of working? What are you doing differently than you have done before? Post it here and let’s share some ideas.
Eric, you’re now above flood stage. Your project reminds me so much of the quest of folks to raise their world above the fray, including those who deal with floods and move all they can to upper floors or roll up their pant legs. Actually it conjures the title of the J.D. Salinger book I read more than 40 years ago, “Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenter.” Or it reminds me of Browning’s line, “Man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” What can be worse than back pain, so I hope this bring any kind of relief for that. What’s value for all of us is to see someone breaking out and trying something a little radical, experimental, new. Keep moving the frontiers of your life farther out or higher up. Change the view and see something new.