I don’t know it this is a function of getting old, or of my increasingly indecisive personality, but I no longer know where to sit. I’m adrift in my new apartment even though part of the reason I moved recently was to have an enticing, pleasant place to work.
My former desk faced a parking lot, so I wound up working at the kitchen table, which had a view of the same parking lot, but at least it was near the refrigerator and I could easily grab snacks while working.
I now have a huge, beautiful office facing a lake. I even got a corner desk so I could face the lake from two windows, AND a desktop computer with a big monitor which forces me to stay in one place while working. I bought a round glass dining room table purposely because it was singularly unsuited for working and I was determined to escape the working and eating trap.
So, what do I do?
I sit on the couch in front of the TV and type on my tiny laptop on the coffee table—where I also eat and watch TV. This is a singularly uncomfortable place to work--but somehow it is the spot in my new place that has called to me. It’s as close as I can come to the kitchen without sitting at the actual dining table.
“Sit here,” the couch coos, “you won’t have to make a commitment to working or not working, eating or not eating, watching TV or not watching TV. You won’t have to make any decisions at all. You’re just sitting here temporarily while you decide what to do with your day.”
A.A. Milne’s poem, Halfway Down, (one of my favorites when I was a kid) described it perfectly
Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.
Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up
And it isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery,
It isn't in town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head.
It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!
My cat, Yenta, understands my ambivalence. Cats are maddening creatures who tend to stand at doors endlessly, deciding whether to go in or out. Yenta has a cat door from the house to the patio. She often sits in front of it, inside the house but gazing at the patio. “It’s scary out there,” she wailed at me as she ran into the house a few days ago when a feral cat jumped on the screened roof of the patio and howled at her.
Halfway in and halfway out. She has her own cat bed on the couch but prefers to balance precariously to sleep on the top of the couch instead.
When she’s on the patio she tries out new spots. Under a chair, on a chair, gazing out at the ducks and the iguanas, chasing lizards back and forth. Inside she is marking out territory. She sleeps on her little cat bed on the end of my bed, or settles down on the arm of the couch next to me, or sleeps under the covers of my bed during the day when she wants seclusion.
Maybe I am doing the same. Marking out territory.
Or maybe I’m just getting old. In fact a lot of my seating problem is due to arthritis and height shrinkage. I used to be able to sit comfortably anywhere. But now I need back support, foot support, arm support and a seat I can get out of.
I bought an ugly, hard reclining couch because my feet touch the ground when I sit on it, the seat is shallow enough that I can get up from it, the back is hard not soft so it keeps me upright. And it has gadgets, a console with cup holders and an outlet to charge my phone. I miss what it lacks—squishiness. But curling up on a soft couch is no longer an option for my stiff-as-a-board body.
I find it hard to leave the couch because I suffer from entropy. I’m an object that when at rest, stays at rest. And when in motion can’t wait to rest.
As for my new office I am wrestling with chairs. My former office chair was uncomfortable stiff mesh that I would reinforce with makeshift lumbar and neck supports which need constantly adjustments. I felt I deserved better, so I spent hours at Staples trying on chairs. I wound up bringing home an upholstered number that was comfy in the store but offers no back support. And worse I forgot why I went there in the first place-- to use the $30 Staples gift certificate my friend Kate gave me as a housewarming present—and wound up not spending it. I almost bought a gaming chair but the thought of sitting all day on a seat from the bridge of Star Wars deterred me.
What lesson have I learned from this musical chairs’ debacle?
You take yourself with you.
I moved to a new place and thought that because I had fulfilled my dream to live on a lake, I would magically become a grown up and actually eat at the dining table, work in my office, watch TV from the couch. No such luck.
I suppose I need to accept my indecisiveness as one of the many indignities of aging—or just of my personality. Eventually I’ll get up from the couch. Unless my knees give out first.