758 Evidentially

I am having some kind of problem with my hip. Like the leg is coming out of it’s socket. I can feel it grinding around as I move sometimes too. It makes it very hard to sit down and make pages. it’s not really a new problem. It’s actually done the popping in and out thing for as long as I can remember. It’s just more of a pain now.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get things set up so I can work standing up sometimes, but I can’t quite make it work. What I’m hoping to do is get it set up so I can go from one way of working to the other in a single motion. My screen is on an arm with a really strong joint though. It has a spring, so I’d have to hold it in place or it will snap up and potentially damage itself. Or maybe even me somehow. When I switch to sitting down, I mean. It would hold itself up in the standing position.

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a long time. Strangely enough, a podcast I like briefly mentioned some kind of expensive desk that you can work at standing up. It’s for, like, managerial work though. I only saw the picture for a second, but I think all of the keys and whatnot were on adjust able arms so you could maneuver them to suit how you are standing. Sitting vast stretches is damaging to a person and I’ve been doing it for a few years now. In the olden times cartoonists sat hunched over a drafting table, and seemed to get by just fine. I’m sure they must have had issues, but I’ve never heard about them. I could probably set my desk up so that it mimics a drawing table, but I’m not sure it would help. I’m not even sure standing would be an improvement. I mean how long can a person draw standing up? Even if they are in good shape, which I am not? I don’t even like standing still. It hurts after a pretty short time too. If I’m in constant motion I’m fine, but if I stop that’s when I start feeling the pain. Wandering around is not conducive to drawing.

I used to sit kind of leaning way back so that my setup looked a little like I was trying to drive my desk someplace. Now I’ve got it set up so that I’m forced to have better posture. Except I have to lean and twist to get to the keyboard, which I’ve been trying to come up with a solution for. I know that I’ve had some problems caused by the keyboard thing. It was worse before I shifted things around. Now I can turn more fully towards the keys as I need them to type. My leg bumps the middle leg of the desk though, which is what caused me to do the more extreme twisting in the old setup. Now that my chair rotates I can have the keyborad a little more towards the left and have the chair rotate into the hole a bit more.

I was having a problem with my wrist because of the awkward placement of things too. It stopped when I got the keys adjusted in such a way that could get my hand properly in front of them. Part of what led to the original setup is the placement of the lights in the room too. It started as a single light source in the middle of the ceiling, which caused glare unless you had things just so. There are also windows on two sides, which is part of why I almost never work in daylight.

The original light fixture caught fire one night, so it was replaced with some adjustable lights. The ceiling is low enough that I can just reach up and twist them away when I intend to start working in earnest. I can’t cancel the glare completely, but I can diminish it much more than before.

I’ve actually got things pretty well worked out apart from making standing an option. Maybe with a little more fiddling I can get things just right, or at least as close as makes no odds.

Ergonomics is important. Never have I realized it more fully than now.