I know that’s a really weird post title, but it’s also true. I got a new chair, and I think it’s changed my life.
It’s not, actually a new chair. It’s a little beat up and scratched up hand-me-down from a friend who is downsizing in preparation to move. I love it.
It’s an upholstered club lounge chair with a large ottoman. My cat does not trust it, although he’s advanced to napping on the ottoman. It’s a comfortable chair, which is the important part. It’s not like I need to worry about whether it matches my starving-artist décor. :/
It’s changed my life because it has redirected my “leisure time” away from my computer. I can download ebooks and fanfic onto my nookoid and curl up in the chair to read them, instead of trapping myself at my computer to do so. Well, honestly I could have just set up in bed to read that way, but that never felt comfortable to me. I don’t enjoy bed-lounging, I enjoy sleeping in my bed, so between the bed and my desk, I always ended up at my desk.
You know, my desk: where I WORK.
It’s hard to draw that line, as a writer, between working and goofing off. Even a writer who clears 3,000+ words a day can’t write all day. Creativity doesn’t work like that. It’s easy to get too distracted and not write at all, though, which is the other side of the coin. It’s all about the balance.
In my head, my computer desk had somehow morphed from a place of work to a place of leisure. It’s okay if it is a little of both — it always will be, by necessity — but somehow over time my mentality drifted away from “this is a place where I mostly work and sometimes goof off” to “this is a place where I drown in tumblr, twitter, and fanfic.”
Perspective is all in our heads, I know that, but when it gets set it is hard to change.
My new chair has made the change for me, I am surprised to find. Now when I want a break I think about my chair. (Yes, if you read between the lines you’ll realize that this is the first piece of actual lounging furniture I’ve owned in years. Buying something like a couch or comfy chair just always went to the bottom of my priority list.) When I get antsy about working/writing, I get up and go back to my desk.
I’m actually being MORE productive, now. It’s kind of awesome.
I love my chair.
