Time to time

As you may know (from a previous blog, perhaps?), I have hurt my lower back. Fortunately, I am still able to ride to and from school, which has proven to be a healing agent. However, my time at school is a real threat to my well-being (which strangely sounds like the attitudes of many of my students, come to think of it).

I have suffered from lower back woes for decades now, and given that much time, even a person as stupid as I starts to learn which activities are positive for back health and which are contraindicated, tending to cause damage. For me, I remain in the best of health if I alternate sitting and standing for much of my work day. Doing too much of one or the other can cause serious distress in my lumbar region.

Unfortunately, we are in the midst of January, which means that the students are doing final exams in my school. Ordinarily, this would be good news for teachers, since it is a time of mindless supervision during the exams and much needed rest and relaxation when not invigilating. But for me, the supervision requirements are already over and I am facing more than a week of down time. I have plenty of work to do to keep me occupied, being the workaholic that I am, but sadly, much of this work has to be done while sitting in front of the computer.

The danger became real this morning, which happens to be the first day of my “rest and relaxation” period. I was doing comments for report cards, and I was using a new program that has (as is often the case) made my job a lot harder. (Change is not always good!!!) What should have been a 15 minute process for one class was protracted to nearly an hour, and throughout all that time, I was sitting in the same position on my chair, with my right arm extended to reach the mouse.

When I was done, I then became aware of my body and I realized that my right foot had gone a bit numb. Dammit!!!! This could only mean that my lower back was acting up, which made sense because it was injured already from my weekend of biking, and the extended sitting was not helping anything. When I stood up to walk around, my back was stiff and I could not walk perfectly upright. Instead, I was slightly hunched over and hobbling around like an 80 year old man, constantly trying to extend my lower back while rubbing it.

It was still early in the morning, and there were many hours ahead of me. I had a serious problem on my hands, and I certainly could not allow my lower back’s condition to continue to worsen. The solution was clear, and it was something that many friends and family members have suggested to me. I needed to set a timer and every time it rings, I have to get out of my chair and walk around, possibly doing some stretching at the same time, to keep my back limber and pain-free. Simple, right?

My first option for a timer was my Timex Ironman digital watch. Being a watch designed specifically for athletics, it had a built in timer feature – one that I had used on many occasions in the past when doing planks during my core routine. So, I set the timer to 15 minutes, pressed start, and then proceeded to do some work.

Some time later, the quietest sound penetrated my consciousness. It was the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in a park, it was the squeak of a tire from the other side of the city, and it was the muted groan of a 56 year old man as he realized that he had been sitting on a chair for far too long.

The watch had indeed rang its alarm after the required time period, but it had been so soft that my brain did not register it. It would be tempting to blame this on my age, and on the tinnitus I suffer from after listening to loud rock music on my Sony Walkman for so many years. There may be some truth to these facts, but I believe that the main reason was because I was total immersed in my work session. One of the secrets to my high productivity is a singular focus on the task at hand, and not allowing any outside stimuli to distract me. (It also helps to have no friends.)

I tried using the watch a few more times, but either I didn’t hear the alarm again, or I completely forgot to reset it and start the timer. Consequently, I was not walking frequently enough, and my body was suffering. Clearly, using the watch was not going to get the job done.

So, I changed tactics and decided to use a timer function from the internet. I just used the standard one offered in Google Chrome, set it to 15 minutes, pressed start, and I dove deeply back into the physics project I was currently working on. Time and space vanished for me, and all that existed for me were charged spheres and surface integrals and electric flux.

All of sudden, cymbals of great size and density were slammed into both of my ears with the force of the most powerful boxers and MMA fighters. Air sirens were blown directly into my ear drum until my head resonated, causing it to shake at 15 on the Richter scale. A nuclear bomb was unleashed beside my desk, and the subsequent shock wave slammed into me and knocked me right off the chair. In other words, the alarm went off and it was loud as hell!!!!

It scared the living daylights out of me, and I sat there motionless, my heart racing at 300 beats per minute. I felt like I had lost 5 years of my life right then and there. Whoever designed that internet timer must have been a sadistic devil whose sole objective in the world is to destroy everyone’s hearing.

But to its credit, the timer certainly got me out of the chair. I mean, I sprung out of my seat like it was on fire, and I practically ran around my empty classroom (all of the chairs were in the gym, being used for the final exams), trying desperately to reduce the shaking of my body and to restore my equilibrium. My back was definitely feeling better, but at what cost to my hearing and to my sanity?

Are those my only two options? A watch alarm that could only be heard when the room is completely silent and I am fully focussed on it, or the internet alarm that was able to alert all of the staff members around my entire school, causing a mass panic, thinking that there was a fire or a lockdown? Surely there must be a third option, one that keeps me walking but that also preserves my hearing.

The good news is that I have more than a week to solve this problem. And when I do, my lower back will rejoice and it will be about time.