working from home is a pain in the neck
Apr. 14th, 2020 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kitewithfishOnce again, I don't really mean to fall off the edge of the world, but I so often do.
Currently, I am taking a sick day because yesterday morning I tweaked something in my back and neck and could not stand without pain. I took a sick day yesterday - I couldn't turn over without pain! I took a sick day again this morning, and have spent most of the day reclined but rising to do physical therapy exercises to gently stretch things out.
The last time my back decided to do this, I was visiting my in-laws and it was a major hassle. Then, a trip to a chiropractor helped me figure out that it was all really related to freezing my trapezius muscle up - being stuck in a stressful, forward-leaning posture on the plane trip to them to start with, and then a similar posture on a rocking and bouncing boat had made it worse (my in-laws have purchased a retirement boat, and by god, they will get the good of it when the weather permits.) Since the trapezius runs from base of the skull to the bottom of the ribs, all the leaning forward from the neck manifested in pain at the base of my right ribs.
I am dead certain that my work-from-home set up has cause this flair up. I work from the dining room table more often than not, and the chairs set me up in a very forward leaning posture where I am squinting at my small laptop screen from a kitchen chair. I have at least a mouse and a keyboard, but there's just no good way to make the dining room table function as anything but a dining table. Tho we have a home office with a proper office chair and an adjustable stand-sit desk, the reality it that my husbeast uses it much more than me. On the level of pragmatics, that makes perfect sense - he's in video meetings all day so if he were out in the public space, he'd effectively make it impossible to move around the real living space without tiptoeing, and he's not quiet.
As a solution, I probably will need to figure out some kind of compromise - either getting another smaller desk that I can adjust to work for me, or some kind of situation where I use the office more.
Currently, I am taking a sick day because yesterday morning I tweaked something in my back and neck and could not stand without pain. I took a sick day yesterday - I couldn't turn over without pain! I took a sick day again this morning, and have spent most of the day reclined but rising to do physical therapy exercises to gently stretch things out.
The last time my back decided to do this, I was visiting my in-laws and it was a major hassle. Then, a trip to a chiropractor helped me figure out that it was all really related to freezing my trapezius muscle up - being stuck in a stressful, forward-leaning posture on the plane trip to them to start with, and then a similar posture on a rocking and bouncing boat had made it worse (my in-laws have purchased a retirement boat, and by god, they will get the good of it when the weather permits.) Since the trapezius runs from base of the skull to the bottom of the ribs, all the leaning forward from the neck manifested in pain at the base of my right ribs.
I am dead certain that my work-from-home set up has cause this flair up. I work from the dining room table more often than not, and the chairs set me up in a very forward leaning posture where I am squinting at my small laptop screen from a kitchen chair. I have at least a mouse and a keyboard, but there's just no good way to make the dining room table function as anything but a dining table. Tho we have a home office with a proper office chair and an adjustable stand-sit desk, the reality it that my husbeast uses it much more than me. On the level of pragmatics, that makes perfect sense - he's in video meetings all day so if he were out in the public space, he'd effectively make it impossible to move around the real living space without tiptoeing, and he's not quiet.
As a solution, I probably will need to figure out some kind of compromise - either getting another smaller desk that I can adjust to work for me, or some kind of situation where I use the office more.
