ah-hah!

today, i thought a bit about things, and came to some startling conclusions. i'll share them with you now.

the victim: my wrist, and through it, me. i'll be the first to admit that i sometimes make a very whiny victim, but at other times, i can fake very well in the 'no really, i'm fine' department. the wrist took a nose dive, to use another anatomical phrase. but that thinking thing i mentioned earlier, well, i think i figured out the culprit[s].

culprit the first: chairs. what? chairs should hurt one's ass, not one's wrist. i know, i know. bear with me. i have a habit concerning the getting out of and getting more comfortable in chairs. i place my hands on the arms of the chair, and push myself up, using more arm power than anything else.

i do this on the office chairs throughout the english dept here. it helps me settle properly in a chair that doesn't fit my height. [i'm short, for those few of you who haven't stood next to me]

i do this to get out of the blue disk chair i bought long, long ago in a city far, far away [i.e. in my senior year as an undergrad]. to be honest, with a chair as deep and comfortable as that one, it's about the only way one can get out of it. not a matter of preference at all.

i do this when i go home and sit in the recliners owned by my parental unit. those chairs are comfy, yeah, but i need to push myself up and settle from above to really feel at all comfortable in them. and to recline in them, one must lean back while doing a concerted arm-push. really, who sits in a recliner on their vacation and doesn't recline? that's what i thought.

but wait, i thought [remember, this is my train of thought]. i've had the blue chair for forever, and it never caused problems until my first spring semester. the recliners don't really bother me all that much [except this last time, when they tweaked the wrist and i stupidly kept reclining]. the office chairs don't suddenly appear and disappear as the wrist pains come and go. they're constant, when the arthritis is not.

enter culprit the second: stress. yeah, this one thing causes so many problems in my life, i know. but bear with me. it works out.

the first time the wrist hurt, i was taking twitchy's class, and writing a paper on XYZ. i had my laptop back then, and wrote best in the blue chair. i had to get up several times, pushing down on the chair. i mean LOTS of times. and during the course of that short paper, the wrist became unusable. stress + blue chair.

the next time, i don't remember what i was doing, and so forth for the rest except the last two times. this last time, it was a vacation with recliners that started the twinges, followed by regular use of the office chair and reading in the blue chair. the time before that, the wrist bent awkwardly while handling a heavy cat food bag. that time, i got to feel shifting stuff in there.

so. i doubt the chairs are the causes of this wrist stuff. i really do. but they are probably exacerbating elements in the scheme of things. like gum. my jaw periodically aches, and the underlying cause is not a piece of wrigley's. but too much chewing for too long and BAM.

so the blue chair has been folded up and put away. when i go home for the next break, i will not recline in recliners. i will endeavor to adjust the office chair properly or else get myself a foot rest or something. and in the meantime, i'll just have to wear the damn brace and start doing more with my left hand.

but this train of thought was promising. if i can predict what will aggrivate the wrist, i can avoid doing those things. hopefully, this avoidance will prevent further dealings with a wrist that can't pull its own weight.

love and peace