I would like to welcome everyone back to my brand new blog. A few years back I used to have a blog but I let it fall by the wayside. So after wandering in the wilderness of Facebook and Twitter for a while I have returned with a new focus and an intent to share interesting tidbits with you guys and learn from the discussions that hopefully, occasionally follow. I’ll be covering a variety of topics, not just those pertaining to business related stuff, but also more personal stuff such as cooking, music, etc. One thing I won’t be covering is politics, I feel that gets kicked around enough on Facebook, here will be an oasis from that, hopefully. In any case, let’s get started shall we?
As anyone who has followed me on Facebook knows, I made the decision last year to switch to a standup desk. You see after years of a really active job I had settled into my graphic design / web design / freelancing career which unfortunately meant sitting behind a desk for a majority of my day. After several years of this I noticed some things I didn’t like. For instance, I was putting on some weight, I didn’t have the cardio endurance I used to, simple task were now starting to get a little harder. I did some research and found that people who sit down for 8 hours or more per day greatly increase their chances of dying. That combined with the evidence I was experiencing and coupled with the fact that I was rapidly approaching my 40th birthday convinced me that it was time to get more serious about what I was doing with my body.
So I set about rigging up a tower on top of my desk so that I could stand up and work. Upon finishing my “Standup Desk 1.0 Beta”, I marveled at it, and wondered if I would be awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of it crashing down… In any case the next day I proudly started my first day of stand up work, and it was pure torture. Nothing like taking someone who is used to sitting down all day and then making them stand up and work. My legs hurt, my feet hurt, I missed my big comfy office chair. After a few days I made a hard decision and put my chair at the road for someone to pick up. Goodbye old friend! I shall miss the time we shared together. As the time went by I got used to it and the pain went away. Now I easily spend at least 8 hours or more standing and moving per day.
It was then that I started to notice the quality of my work started to pick up. I started to draw a correlation between my old “sedentary” self and my new “proactive” self. You see I think by choosing to stand up, I’m choosing to actively participate, instead of sitting back and waiting for stuff to come to me. It was easy to sit in my comfy chair and be content but by pushing myself out of my comfort zone I forced myself to engage and participate. Once I realized that I started to think of the choice to stand up as more than a health choice and more than a choice of sitting vs. standing, I realized that it’s the choice between being reactive or proactive. Once I accepted that mindset there was never any doubt that I would never go back to sitting down.
So here I stand, starting this blog back up, continuing to re-engage and participate. What started as one small choice, one small step has started me on a path of positivity with no end in sight. Standing led to being more active, which led to more walking, which led to going back to the gym. I’m slowly getting in the best shape I think I’ve ever been in and professionally I’m sharper than ever. I’ve even recently made a bigger step and threw out my desk all together in favor of the “Stand Up Desk 2.0” which amounts to a repurposed bookshelf and a wall mounted, retracting table from Ikea ( love those guys! ). So next time you think the odds are insurmountable and it’s takes too much effort to change, remember it all starts with one small step, one tiny decision. Stand up, you may be surprised where it takes you!
– Ryan