Back in June, when I went to visit my parents and came home with my dad’s truck, my mom also sent me home with a treadmill.
This was very generous of her.
It was also, apparently, an act of unloading her own guilt.
Because Mom had acquired this perfectly good under-desk treadmill with every intention of using it, only to discover a much easier little contraption: the pedal exerciser. You sit in a chair. You pedal your little feet. You don’t have to plug anything in. You don’t have to rearrange anything. You don’t even have to stand up.
Naturally, the treadmill was abandoned.
So she gave it to me.
She also gave me a pedal exerciser identical to hers.
I think you can see where this is going.
For approximately two months, the treadmill has been propped against the wall in my office while I happily pedaled away from the comfort of my chair.
Like mother, like daughter.
🍎
The truly stupid part is that an under-desk treadmill isn’t even new territory for me.
At my previous house, my office was specifically arranged so I could work sitting, standing, or walking. I had another under-desk treadmill—an objectively shittier one—and my monitors, keyboard and mouse could all be elevated so I could walk or lightly jog while working.
Then we moved.
And somewhere between unpacking an entire house, setting up my office, acquiring approximately 47 aquariums, turning the room into a botanical garden, building what appears to be a small NASA command center and generally being me, the walking-while-working habit disappeared.
Meanwhile, I’ve been noticing something lately.
Sitting at my desk all day fucking hurts.
The longer I sit, the worse I feel when I finally get up. And considering there are some things going on with my health right now that I don’t particularly feel like getting into here, staying active and taking care of my heart has become considerably more important than it used to be.
So today I finally looked at that treadmill.
The treadmill looked at me.
The Nun painting beside it probably judged both of us.
And I plugged the damn thing in.
I raised my monitors back to their former standing height. I elevated my keyboard and mouse. I moved everything around until my workstation once again looked like the setup I used to love.
And wouldn’t you know it?
I finished just in time for lunch. 😏
So the current plan is to scarf down the leftover spaghetti I made last night, climb aboard this thing, put a movie on one of the approximately seven thousand screens apparently required to perform my job, and see how it feels.
I’m not trying to run a marathon underneath my desk.
I’m not even particularly concerned about speed.
That’s actually what I love about this setup: time matters more than intensity.
If I’m answering messages, working tickets, researching something, sitting through meetings or doing any of the other things that normally keep me chained to this desk for hours, there’s absolutely no reason some of those hours can’t happen while I’m moving at an easy pace.
One mile becomes two.
Thirty minutes becomes an hour.
An hour here and another there suddenly becomes a pretty impressive amount of walking without having to carve a separate chunk out of my day to “go exercise.”
I’m already here.
I’m already working.
I might as well move my ass.
And if it feels good today, I’m going to leave the workstation elevated and continue the rest of my workday standing and walking whenever I can.
There is something deeply satisfying about the idea of finishing a workday and realizing that not only did I get my work done, but my body wasn’t folded into an office chair for eight straight hours while my circulation filed a formal complaint.
Of course, there remains one tiny problem.
The pedal exerciser is still sitting approximately three feet away.
Easy.
Convenient.
Unplugged.
Tempting me.
And based on the fact that my mother gave me this treadmill because she ignored it in favor of the exact same pedal machine, there is apparently a strong hereditary component to this particular form of laziness.
But today, Mom, I broke the cycle.
Literally.
I chose the treadmill.
Please don’t ask me again tomorrow. 😹
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