Swedish furniture model or sound made by an arrow leaving a bow?
This chair, this used IKEA Poang chair, this slice of birchwood-veneer and cotton-
fabric heaven is the only thing keeping money coming in on my side of the Randy-Holly ledger.
After I found it on craigslist and hauled it up out of a grad student's basement apartment, I set it up at work. Even though I stuck some paper-roll ends under the back of the base to counter the lounging-on-the-Lido angle, people stood and stared. "Where'd you get that?" "Well, you look comfortable!" "Why'd you bring that in?"
For the first several months, before I told them about my kidney failure, I'd reply, "Well, when I get too tired to hold my head up, I can still sit here and go through e-mail or edit stories." They'd laugh, thinking this was some crusty-old-editor joke. "Yeah, right!"
Yeah, right. It was the simple truth. From putting in the occasional 18-hour day, I was to the point where I didn't have the energy to sit up straight. I knew it was time to adjust my work infrastructure after I dreamed one night about a hospital gurney in my cubicle. It just fit behind the desk, and I could raise the head of the bed, lie on my side and mouse on the table tray. I tell ya, the image of being able to work from that hospital bed is still as seductive to me as the dream vision of a Hollywood A-lister is to a normal person.
Because right now, I can fall asleep anywhere. From someone who needed earplugs, darkness, no air movement and PJs to even contemplate the land of Nod, I've turned into that uncle who leans his head back, lets his jaw drop and dozes off after every meal. I can fall asleep on the couch after work or after supper, take a nap at almost any time of day and sleep through any amount of noise, including my own (more on that later). I don't dare drive home to Michigan to see my parents anymore; the last time I did I had to stop midway through the 6-hour journey, pull off the road and close my eyes for an hour.
Social stuff is especially enervating. The energy it takes to keep up my end of the conversation, concentrate on the other person for an hour or so and process what to say next is unbelievably tiring. I'm an introvert anyway, in the "does not garner energy from being in front of a group" definition, so doing interviews is already somewhat taxing. These days, a couple a day are enough to send me to bed early that night. And instead of the random 18-hour workday, I'm now putting in the occasional 18-hour sleepfest.
A couple months ago, I nearly fell asleep in an MRI unit. Never mind that having an MRI is something like lying in a steel coffin while a metal worker pop-rivets the exterior. I was on my back and still, and that's all it takes. I had to fight it off as hard as I do driving, because I go through whole-body muscle spasms as I drift off. As we proceeded from 3-minute to 5-minute to 9-minute imaging sessions, the prospect of having a poltergeist-like blur in the middle of the sequence became more of a threat. Because these aren't little twitches. Think "Cartoon character realizes he lay down on a rattlesnake." I'm truly amazed I don't levitate a foot in the air.
But you know what? It doesn't interfere with falling asleep. After all, not much does these days.
After I found it on craigslist and hauled it up out of a grad student's basement apartment, I set it up at work. Even though I stuck some paper-roll ends under the back of the base to counter the lounging-on-the-Lido angle, people stood and stared. "Where'd you get that?" "Well, you look comfortable!" "Why'd you bring that in?"
For the first several months, before I told them about my kidney failure, I'd reply, "Well, when I get too tired to hold my head up, I can still sit here and go through e-mail or edit stories." They'd laugh, thinking this was some crusty-old-editor joke. "Yeah, right!"
Yeah, right. It was the simple truth. From putting in the occasional 18-hour day, I was to the point where I didn't have the energy to sit up straight. I knew it was time to adjust my work infrastructure after I dreamed one night about a hospital gurney in my cubicle. It just fit behind the desk, and I could raise the head of the bed, lie on my side and mouse on the table tray. I tell ya, the image of being able to work from that hospital bed is still as seductive to me as the dream vision of a Hollywood A-lister is to a normal person.
Because right now, I can fall asleep anywhere. From someone who needed earplugs, darkness, no air movement and PJs to even contemplate the land of Nod, I've turned into that uncle who leans his head back, lets his jaw drop and dozes off after every meal. I can fall asleep on the couch after work or after supper, take a nap at almost any time of day and sleep through any amount of noise, including my own (more on that later). I don't dare drive home to Michigan to see my parents anymore; the last time I did I had to stop midway through the 6-hour journey, pull off the road and close my eyes for an hour.
Social stuff is especially enervating. The energy it takes to keep up my end of the conversation, concentrate on the other person for an hour or so and process what to say next is unbelievably tiring. I'm an introvert anyway, in the "does not garner energy from being in front of a group" definition, so doing interviews is already somewhat taxing. These days, a couple a day are enough to send me to bed early that night. And instead of the random 18-hour workday, I'm now putting in the occasional 18-hour sleepfest.
A couple months ago, I nearly fell asleep in an MRI unit. Never mind that having an MRI is something like lying in a steel coffin while a metal worker pop-rivets the exterior. I was on my back and still, and that's all it takes. I had to fight it off as hard as I do driving, because I go through whole-body muscle spasms as I drift off. As we proceeded from 3-minute to 5-minute to 9-minute imaging sessions, the prospect of having a poltergeist-like blur in the middle of the sequence became more of a threat. Because these aren't little twitches. Think "Cartoon character realizes he lay down on a rattlesnake." I'm truly amazed I don't levitate a foot in the air.
But you know what? It doesn't interfere with falling asleep. After all, not much does these days.
