Vanessa’s Team Pick:
I work at a desk. I imagine many of you do? If you’re anything like me, this gives you some level of anxiety. You know, because sitting is going to kill us all and your vision is getting bad because you squint at the screen and oh my god human beings are supposed to be out in the fields tending the crops and chasing fairies and magical elves, not in an office building eating a sad desk lunch! HELP!
Okay maybe you’re less crazy about it than I am, but seriously, spending 40+ hours a week at a desk is kind of not the best thing. So people have been coming up with solutions to help us poor corporate desk warriors. What do these solutions include?
The standing desk. The yoga ball. The kneeling desk. And the one I just discovered today, my favorite of all the options, the one I want right now oh my god please someone get this for me: The Treadmill Desk.
It is exactly what it sounds like – a desk on top of a moving conveyer belt where you can walk slowly all day and do lots of work. What?! I know. But! My favorite part about the treadmill desk is not that it’s the best (I haven’t tried any of these out so I have no idea) and not that it’s the newest (people have been writing about it for months, so I’m just late to the game). No, the best thing about treadmill desks is the hilarious yet informative article Susan Orlean wrote about them for this week’s New Yorker. Seriously, it’s stupendous. Let me be clear: I am not just team picking the treadmill desk. Oh no, that would be silly. I am team picking the article in the New Yorker that Susan Orlean wrote about treadmill desks. Whew, okay, glad we’re all on the same page now.
In case you don’t know, Susan Orlean is an author and staff writer for The New Yorker who happens to also have a very funny Twitter feed where she used to talk a lot about her chickens.
Here’s an example of why this particular Orlean article is so swell. It opens like this:
“I am writing this while walking on a treadmill. And now you know the biggest problem with working at a treadmill desk: the compulsion to announce constantly that you are working at a treadmill desk. It’s a lot like the early days of cell-phone calls, when the simple fact that you were doing what you were doing seemed so amazing that most conversations consisted largely of exclamations about the amazingess of the call.”
And it only gets better. Orlean also includes a lot of feelings about her FitBit, and I happen to be obsessed with my FitBit, so the article was really perfect for me, ya know? I just felt like we were on the same page, me and this article. It was a magic moment.
The New Yorker has a paywall on their website, but if you can somehow track down this full article and read it (either online or in print) I strongly encourage you to do so. And then I beg that you buy me a treadmill desk, because oh my god I want one. Please. I also wouldn’t mind a one on one tea party with Susan Orlean to discuss my new treadmill desk. Just sayin’. My birthday is December 21.
What’s your ideal work desk? Do you work outdoors? If so I hate you slash simultaneously want to be you. Tell me all about your butt / chair / desk / worklife situation. Ready, set, treadmill desk, GO!
