Sitting down all day was literally turning in to pain in my ass, so I decided my new desk at my new house would be designed for standing.

Unfortunately, you can’t really just go up to the furniture store and pick up a standing desk. There were a few decent desks that might have been convertable, but Aisling decided that the easiest way to create one would be to start from scratch.

I didn’t have a whole lot of demands other than getting the height of the keyboard and monitors right, so about $35 worth of wood, paint, and screws from Lowe’s was enough to get the project rolling.

Now instead of sitting around all day on the internet… I can stand around.

Practical Concerns

In general, it is probably healthier to stand than sit. You’re burning more calories throughout the day, and there’s less pressure on the spine and hip bones.

However, there’s a lot more pressure on the feet. So you’ll need some really comfy mats, or as I’m improvising now a lot of pillows and blankets. The downside to that, of course, is that my dog thinks I’ve made her a new bed next to my feet. Then again, the dog always seems to think that my feet are her bed.

For the first day, I felt a lot of strain in my leg muscles and pain in my feet. I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea.

On the second and third days, things got even worse. I was pretty tempted to sit down with my laptop on the kitchen table and give up on the whole experiment.

But on the fourth day I was starting to feel pretty good about it again. Sitting down felt a little… weird… like my legs wanted something constructive to do with themselves.

After a couple weeks, I’m definitely glad to be standing. I’ve still got the laptop for whenever I’m feeling lazy or sick, but for the most part I’m writing and working from an upright position. It is like years of bad posture have started melting away!