Finding Comfort

I needed a new chair. This wouldn’t be just any chair – this would be my office chair, the one I sat in when I wrote and did my podcast and Skyped with clients. I’d bought one about the same time I started Author, right as I was writing my first essays and scheduling my first interviews. It had served me well for over ten years, but one of the armrests was missing a screw, the seat was torn, and my podcast producer could hear it squeaking as we were getting ready to go live.

I had to reject the first replacement. I put it together, sat in it, tried to tilt back – and nothing. It was as rigid as a kitchen chair. I didn’t understand that thinking required both swiveling and tilting until I couldn’t do one. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter because I hate returning things to stores, but every time I sat it in it the first thing I’d try to do is dip back, as if I could break the chair of willful disobedience. Fred Meyer said I could bring it back fully assembled, so back it went.

My wife found the next one online. Office Depot promised it could be delivered in a couple days. It arrived late on a Friday evening and I put it together the next morning. I sat in it. It swiveled and titled. But did it tilt enough? I rolled it into my office. I’d kept the old one out of necessity, and so I pushed it aside and tucked the new one into my desk and sat in it again. It seemed a little stiff, a little too firm. Also, the back was short, coming only to my shoulder blades. The other was tall; I could rest my head against the back.

I got up and sat in the old soldier. It was like putting on a pair of worn sneakers. I didn’t realize how it had conformed to the shape of my body, how I had flattened all firmness out of it. I wondered if my only problem with the new chair was that it wasn’t the old chair. I sat in the new one again. I wasn’t sure. The next day, I still wasn’t sure, but its firmness was starting to irritate me. By the end of the day I thought I was getting a neck ache from not being able to rest my head ahead against the back.

I called Office Depot. Could I return a chair even though I’d put it together? No, they said, I’d have to disassemble it. I hung up and sat in the chair again. Maybe I could get accustomed to it. I used it for a day, and then another, trying to measure if I could work in it, if I was comfortable. I had to be comfortable. Discomfort is distraction, and writing requires focus. And then, on the third day, I was writing happily, engrossed in a new project, and I looked up from what I was doing, tilted back, and realized that was first time I’d thought about the chair.

For a moment, I was a little disappointed. I realized I had started believing I might be on a hunt for The Perfect Chair. If I could bring myself to pull this one apart, I’d go to Office Depot, sit in chair after chair until, like Goldilocks, I’d find the one that was just right. I was looking forward to that moment of comfort and satisfaction, of discovering what felt like it had been made for me. Apparently, I’d already found it, when I wasn’t actually looking, wasn’t caring, wasn’t measuring, just sitting.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com