work – this gruntled worker

screenshot2019-01-31at2.42.44pm — the PWR+ laptop stand.

Yesterday, my constantly-laptop-typing writer friend sent me an email – she had started to feel pain in her hands and arms and was growing alarmed that it might be the beginnings of a repetitive stress injury like the ones I had suffered. Had I ever felt her particular type of pain? Not exactly. But mine was similar enough that I felt compelled to swoop in with recommendations. After nearly two years with vaguely-diagnosable yet completely debilitating pains, I feel like something of an expert. You need a doctor? A physical therapist? An occupational therapist? An acupuncturist who takes insurance? A chiropractor? I can shuffle my stack of medical business cards like a Vegas magician: were you thinking of a massage therapist who also knows reiki? My audience volunteer gasps, YES, I do need one of those!

Where was I? Oh yes. So I resisted the urge to send this friend a 10,000 word email listing everything I have tried for my injuries. Instead, I will share them with you. I guess it would only be fair for me to forward her the link as well, since she inspired this post.

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a doctor (insert testimonial about consulting your doctor…I am not legally responsible for what happens to you after reading this). I am, however, an informed consumer, so allow me to share some of my favorite tools with you. Oh, and I am not getting any commission here – these are actually the things I use.

ERGONOMICS

A laptop stand. Mine has three adjustable hinges and an adorable, removable mouse stand. It can be used as a standing desk, a keyboard rest for an existing monitor setup, or as a monitor stand. Plus it folds! And it weighs only 3.9 pounds!
An ergonomic split keyboard. I use the Microsoft Sculpt one with a detached keypad to activate a calculator on your screen. It keeps your arms parallel to reduce strain on forearm muscles.
A decent wireless mouse. I use the Logitech M185. I also have the Logitech wireless touchpad, which is like a larger version of the laptop trackpad. It’s good for navigating and zooming but less good for graphic work. I’m considering a vertical mouse, but haven’t made the leap yet.
A bean bag wrist wrest. I use the Ergo beads wrist rest to keep my wrists in perfect position for mousing.
An memory foam ass pad. Yes, I said ass pad. I have this chair pad. If you must sit at all, this will make it less hurty.

BRACES

I was slouching all over the place until I got a back brace. Fatigue can result in sloppy slouches. It is not ideal to use a brace instead of core strength, but the Shark Tank-featured BetterBack brace is really great for this.
Wrist splints. I wear these at night to prevent numb hands in the morning. It’s not exactly sexy, but neither is not being able to move your hands.

MUSCLE RELIEF

A neck heating pad. OMG. I cannot say enough about this. I got one as a gift from a coworker two years ago and have been using it every day since. I warm my neck up in the morning and again at night before doing my stretches. If you’re particularly crafty, as my mother is, you could make one from cherry pits (she actually bought a barrel of these). The one she gave me smells so good and gives off moist warmth. I overheated a burn hole it in the microwave one day, but salvaged the cherries and sewed a new one.
A peanut roller. What? It’s basically two lacrosse balls joined like a mini barbell. I roll it over my hands and forearms after typing for too long.
A foam roller. I use this every morning – it’s a packable size and less squishy then the fat pool noodle foam ones. It offers a satisfying crack and pop as I roll my back over it

BOOK

Deskbound book . This one was recommended to me by my physical therapist. It’s a textbook, but written so lay people can understand it. If you’re looking for exercises to build or stretch those muscles after desk work, it is definitely worth the investment.

I hope these help! If you have any other go-to tools, send them my way!

DIY, My story, Work tools

conduit, curtains, and containers

January 7, 2019 thisgruntledworker

10 years in the making. They’re a little wrinkly, but I’ll steam them!

You DEFINITELY don’t see this in Florida! a poofy-haired tourist-lady exclaimed as I boarded the uptown C train at 23rd street. She was referring to the two ten-foot steel pipes that I had just threaded through the feet of the bewildered passengers. That’s right! I responded. I gotta get these things home, and they won’t fit in a cab. It was almost Christmas, so people were feeling festively forgiving.

What the hell was I doing on the C train (and after transferring at 168th street, also the A train) with 20 combined feet of hollow galvanized steel conduit pipe, you might ask?

You see, for the past ten years, I have stored my hoarder-caliber inventory of craft supplies on steel industrial shelves that covered an entire wall of my apartment. The shelves are stacked with Giant Rubbermaid tubs stuffed with fabric, felt, and fleece, and smaller shoe-box bins, containing an assortment of tape, ribbon, wire, or paint (labeled accordingly, of course). I also have wooden IKEA drawers that have survived all of my moves since college, with entire compartments devoted to scissors and rulers from the giddy summer Staples trips of my teaching days. The smallest containers, nestled in a plastic hardware organizer, house bobbins, buttons, jewelry findings, and googly eyes. You need glitter? There’s a drawer for that. Glue sticks? I’ve got you covered.

My boxes and bins do serve a purpose, but they are ugly. Thus, my ongoing design dilemma: I need to keep my supplies visible enough that I remember to use them, but also hidden when I’m not. For almost a decade, I’ve been complaining that I wanted to mount a curtain rod from the ceiling to hide the mess, but despite the fact that I have curated dozens of Pinterest boards for inspiration, I couldn’t commit to do the work to make it happen. I was determined to make my clutter-curing curtain dreams a reality before the end of 2018. It was my Old Year’s resolution.

Determined, I did my research, learning about conduit electrical pipe and iron flanges (flanges—what an awesome word!) and screw-set mounts and elbow joints that would make the project work. The supplies cost less than $75, because we already had the hand-me-down curtains (Thanks, Mom. Yes, I know they came from Pottery Barn. Yes, I know they were expensive!). My husband agreed: we would complete the project during the otherwise lazy week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Delirious from a two-day sinus infection but determined to complete the project, I went to Home Depot to pick up my materials. That was straightforward enough, but things got tricky the moment I tried to leave. I was buying two 10-foot steel pipes, which I planned to transport by myself from 23rd Street back to 204th Street. On the subway.

I somehow managed to get my cargo home without incident, and we hung the curtains without hurting ourselves or each other. Now I can make messy art and hide it when I need to do a video call for work. It’s a win-win for me, and I gave a poofy-haired lady a good story to take back to Florida.

Alienated Labor, Makers, My story, Productivity

Hobby Jobby?

December 19, 2018 thisgruntledworker

The studio manager issues a gentle reminder that the doors will be open in exactly twenty minutes. I wistfully eye the other holiday market vendors with their neatly-arranged tabes. While they’re chatting away with each other, my husband and I are muttering under our respective breaths while struggling to assemble and reinforce our table with industrial-sized clamps and dollar store zip ties. Our inventory of cat toys, hats, note cards and leather bags is scattered on the floor well beyond the confines of our assigned space. Though this is our sixth year participating, we feel like rookies each time. What is wrong with us? I wondered.

One problem is that we are constantly changing our offerings, which means reinventing our booth display each year to accommodate new items. The other participants, who have a more consistent inventory, literally roll up with single suitcases on wheels and create simple, elegant, and seemingly effortless tablescapes. We, on the other hand, make our way up Broadway with our stuff precariously balanced on a U-Line industrial plastic cart (the kind that caterers use to deliver lunches to office buildings), a metal table that doesn’t fold (though we have a total of THREE folding tables at home) and three new metal grid-wall panels, held in place with a haphazard web of bungee cords. The grid, our latest acquisition, was supposed to add height to our 4-foot table to fit even more of our stuff. And this year, we have lots of stuff.

Let me back up here. Since 2012, my boyfriend-turned-husband and I have participated in this amazing fair, which is organized by our neighborhood yoga studio-slash-community-center. Over the years, we have had our same corner booth location, in the main room near the shelves of yoga blankets and cork blocks. We are always flanked by a jewelry maker and her husband and the (very popular) ladies who have a waiting list for free chair massages. Over the years, we have formed a little family of sorts with the other sellers, and we have repeat customers who tell us that our catnip fish and origami mobiles now grace the homes of friends and family on other continents. This is not bad for a nights-and-weekends husband and wife side-hustle that basically pays for our crafting habit and gives us an excuse to binge-watch entire seasons of shows like A Million Little Things (which, by the way, I highly recommend).

But I digress.

Why were we so stressed out this year? It’s partly because we didn’t do the market last year (AKA The Year of Endless Physical and Occupational Therapy), when my hands and neck were in constant pain. Sewing and crochet, which, along with writing and drawing, were my only stress-relieving outlets, were out of the question. Two months ago, after a year of weekly OT, I regained my strength and stability enough to begin cautious crocheting while wearing a black plastic custom thumb splint I designed with my therapist. I was determined to make as many hats and cowls and cards and cat toys as possible in the limited time I had. Never one to under-do things, I approached my side-hustle, stress-relieving hobby with the ambition and joylessness of a first-year investment banker (I can’t vouch for the amount of joy felt by any investment banker, at any point in her career, but I would have NONE. Ever). This felt like work, not fun.

We eventually did get our table assembled, we sold a bunch of stuff, and we also managed to pack up and get home without losing anything, including our minds, on the streets of Manhattan. As I counted our earnings, I promised my husband that the 2019 market would be different. All we needed was a different table setup and a few small changes to our product line, right?

Exhausted from the day and from pushing our awkward caravan of stuff down eight blocks of Broadway, he offered a weary smile in response.

Next year will be different. I promise.

coaching, My story

The Embodiment of Ease

November 27, 2018 thisgruntledworker

As one of my coach credentialing requirements, I must complete a series of “mentor coach” sessions with the founder of my training program. I just finished my third such session with S a few hours ago and I am still thinking about it, or, should I say, feeling it. We have been looking at the International Coach Federation (ICF)’s Core Competencies, which include skills such as active listening and powerful questioning. For the first two sessions, we focused on these competencies in the context of my work with a client.

The way a typical coaching session is structured is, after the initial pleasantries are over, the conversation shifts to an update about progress made since the last session. The “coachee” talks about what she’d like to work on in general, and then we narrow the focus to what could be accomplished during that particular session. I noted that I had been feeling “stuck” in building my coaching website, and, in effect, launching me-as-coach into the larger world. Instead of speaking about my client, S allowed us to deviate from the script.

My trouble still remains in deciding how much myself to include in my professional website. I am trying to create an online presence that feels

authentic (represents who I am as accurately as possible, and connects with my intended audience)
cohesive (tells a story that honors my varied identities as an artist, a writer, a teacher, a scholar, and patient-advocate/peer)
authoritative (conveys the fact that I am uniquely qualified for my particular niche)
engaging (inspires people to want to work with me; is not rigid or stuffy)

For the past two weeks, I have been sucke(re)d into a self-inflicted vulnerability vortex with this question: how much of my personal struggles do I share in order to explain my passion for this particular work, but not to undermine my credibility as a professional?

S sensed that this issue was holding me back and asked which of the ICF competencies we might use as the focus of our call to address it.

I immediately came to Establishing Trust and Intimacy with the Client, which, at the Master coach level, entails (emphasis mine):

Coach is willing to be vulnerable with client and have client be vulnerable with
Coach.
Coach confident in self, process, and the client as a full partner in the relationship.
Sense of complete ease and naturalness in conversation; coach does not have to “work” to coach.

Although we usually role-play with S as client and me as coach, S proposed that we explore my “stuck-ness” in a mini coaching session, and debrief about it afterward. She asked if we could record our call so I could reflect on it later, and, with my permission, she could use it with future students. I immediately agreed.

After I floundered for a bit explaining the root of my problem (which was a combination of being “confident in self” with a sense of “complete ease”), S asked how it would feel to spend an hour working on my site and then just publish it (this how would it feel question, in coach-speak, is called visioning). Of course that would feel great. How would I like to move that forward? I could update my site immediately after our call, for starters. Knowing that I often operate in overthinking mode, S asked what else I might do to embody that sense of ease and confidence. What might that look like?

Wait. What?

Damn. Embodiment. That’s it! Embodiment goes beyond thinking or feeling or talking or doing. It is simply being, taking up space that has a shape. Thinking, feeling, talking, and doing are occur in and through the body. So what would the embodiment of ease look like? I immediately went to yoga: Tadasana, or mountain pose, standing tall with arms at sides, palms facing out. It is not an aggressive—or even assertive—power pose; it is simply a grounded, open one.

So after I exhausted myself with rationalizations, I went back to my body.

Tadasana.

My story

(My) Life of Pi(e)

November 20, 2018 thisgruntledworker

This past weekend, we met up with a friend of my husband’s who he hasn’t seen since before we got married. After the logistical urban nightmare of agreeing on a place where we would meet (via email during her intermittent periods of wifi access), we gave up and squeezed ourselves into a tiny corner table at a cafe. We sat with our teapots, barely able to hear ourselves between the cacophony of a dad attempting to read a Madeline story to his fidgety daughter and a group of parents bemoaning the city’s competitive high school selection process.

The friend miraculously managed to find us (which is good, because we were not planning to go back out into the cold), and, after the introductions and pleasantries, she triumphantly unfurled her map of midtown, eagerly asking “So, where do you guys live?” We pointed to the place way off the map that would indicate our neighborhood, a full 130 blocks north of our current location. Then she asked where our respective commutes took us each day. My husband pointed smack in the center of the map: midtown. Then he smiled at me—he knew my answer would take a minute. Or twenty.

Unless I have class, I usually commute a full twenty feet to my home office these days, but there is something about saying this that still feels like defeat. Even though I am working with more focus than I ever have these days, It’s still easier to frame my answer in terms of where I used to work when I had a full-time job; it’s just an easier narrative for people to hear. I see her face turn into a question mark as I give my elevator speech about Narrative Medicine and my plans beyond graduation. So you’re doing career coaching for people who have chronic illness? Yes, that is my specialty, but I work with others as well. My proud husband chimed in with my various other projects: daily graphic medicine illustrations, volunteering with a hospice organization, working as part of the volunteer collective in my neighborhood bookstore, and co-writing and illustrating a children’s book. When he mentioned our craft business, I wondered whether she was thinking, “Wow, this woman has a lot of interests!” or “Damn, why can’t this woman decide what the hell her focus is?”

The judgment is mine, not hers, I am sure.

Why do I care so much, and what would it say about me if both of these things were equally true? Of course I want to make a good first impression on my husband’s friend. Almost four months post full-time employment, I’m still getting used to explaining what it is that I currently do. It was so much easier when I had a full-time job and thus, a quick answer: “I’m a teacher.” “I work in a startup.” “I work at a university.” Even “I’m a student” is fully true, but it doesn’t actually account for all that I am and how I spend the majority of my time. But people I’m just meeting don’t need to know all of this, anyway!

I have been so programmed to believe that if I am not producing, not earning at my maximum capacity, I am not contributing. But this is not fully true. I feel a greater sense of connection, satisfaction, and meaning from my six hours per week spent volunteering than I ever I did from sitting at a desk for 40-plus hours. What’s a better way to answer this what-do-you-do question? I could start with I am a teacher, a writer, an artist, and a coach, and talk about one of my projects. The story gets a little easier each time I tell it. I just have to keep talking.

And that diagram at the top of this post? That’s how I plan to divide my time once I’m done with school. Pie charts don’t have to be made with Excel, you know…

Tag: work

Laptop-typing troubles? My recommendation roundup.

conduit, curtains, and containers

Hobby Jobby?

The Embodiment of Ease

(My) Life of Pi(e)