Get Up Stand Up
The biggest problem with my "Operation Stand Up" is that I do get worn out. Especially on work days. This should not be happening, as I converted my desk at day job to a standing desk months and months ago, and I should be used to it. The problem is that even after I got used to standing all day, I still have the muscle tone of a jelly fish.
So I haven't just been standing, I've been working to be more active. However, the result right now is that when I do sit down when I get home from work, I can hardly get out of the chair. I mean I'm like a pregnant lady in a bean-bag chair.
The goal, by all the health studies, is to get my sitting time down to four hours a day or less. Right now, that's only reasonable on work days (since I don't sit at work at all). However, I do work well at the kitchen counter, and that will be the focus of forming new habits.
ROW80 Update
Wednesday Day 17 - Longest day of the week at day job, and worn out. But I did keep my sitting time down to four hours or less.Thursday Day 18 - Still really worn out, but I once again did keep my sitting time down to a little more than four hours.
Friday Day 19 - 220 minutes. I had this idea, while reading Kris Rusch's blog. I'll post about it Monday. Between writing up that, and yesterday's post about timing when to find the body in a cozy mystery, I put in quite a lot of time.
Saturday Day 20 - 100 minutes. I mostly wrote fiction today! Not the WIP, but on the Sekrit Projekt I came up with yesterday. Which is not really a secret, and I will say more below....
Sekrit Projekt!
I want to do some freeform writing. Just do the whole "dare to be bad... in public" thing that Dean Wesley Smith is always going on about. I need to break out of my rut, I need to stir things up, and ... I need to blog. I'm mostly out of stuff I want to say on the blog right now.
So I'm combining all of my problems, and I am starting a new fiction feature on this blog, on Mondays. I'm going to turn this blog over to one of the characters from The Serial, and let her just write her friends, her world and their adventures, just in any old way she wants.
I'll start the fiction part of this on May 7. I plan to keep it up for the summer, or at least until the first story arc is done. This Monday I'll post some background on where this is coming from, and the next I'll post an introduction to exactly what I'm doing.
See you in the funny papers.
7 comments:
Wow! This project sounds excellent... what a way to stay engaged 1,000% and more...
Also - great to give permission to stir the ol' blog pot.
Brava!
All that stand-up work makes me tired just reading about it, LOL. I do read on my treadmill, so I'm not totally sedentary. It's a struggle some weeks, though (this one). Your Sekrit project sounds like fun! I need to stir up something, too. Like maybe write something short (definitely stepping out of a comfort zone there). Have a great week!
Thanks, Julie! Yeah, it's a way to leverage my weakness for blogging into a strength.
Jennette: You know, I don't get so tired while I'm standing. But at the end of a long day at work, as soon as I sit down, I'm stuck there, and I'm done for the day.
One way to ease into being less sedentary is to do some reading while on your feet. Pace around.
It's funny how music is ingrained in us. When I read your post title I immediate followed it up with "stand up for your rights!" hehe. Wowser. I can't imagine going back to standing up all day anymore. I did it when I was a sous chef but that was enough for a lifetime. Since you've been doing it that long I would have thought it would have gotten easier by now. Hmm. The secret project sounds interesting. I hope you enjoy it. Good luck!
The secret isn't so much the standing up, but the not sitting down. For instance, getting down on hands and knees to play with the cat or garden.
One of the first studies on the value of not sitting was done in Britain (20-30 years ago?). They studied mortality rates and heart disease in employees of British Rail -- and compared the jobs where people sat at a desk with those where people stood at a counter -- like cashiers or ticket sellers. The standing jobs were not strenuous, but there was still a big difference in heart health and mortality.
I've seen study after study this year. One simply measured activity -- that is playing cards (sitting down) vs. watching tv, and found activity was better than relaxing. And leaning on a stool is better than sitting in an easy chair.
My main problem is that my fitness utterly and completely disappeared after a year of having the "perfect" work chair. I never got up, and I'm paying for it now.
I think I've reached a transition this week, though.
We keep talking about re-equipping our desks here into standing desks (Not as easy with mind, since it's a hundred year old secretary). I always wondered why standing was better (supposedly it's even better than sitting and getting up every 20 minutes or so and walking around the room)... Hmm.
A Sekrit prokekt! Sounds like it will be so much fun! I hope you have a blast with it.
And it sounds like working on your fiction to me. Have great luck with it and the rest of your story.
One of the theories as to why standing is better than sitting is because even though it is not a "strengthening" exercise, the fact that your muscles are in use at all fights insulin resistance.
The Sekrit Projekt is exploding all out of control. (I realized that the messy sequel to one of my earlier books -- Wife of Freedom -- is IDEAL for this. So I want to do that too, all 100k words of it.)
As for working on fiction... well yeah, now I am, but it's different fiction from what I intend.
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