“Sitting is the new smoking,” is a phrase that I heard for the first time the other day. I’m pretty sure that I am months, if not longer, behind the curve on this one. For someone who works 3 – 4 days a week in an office sitting in a chair and staring at a computer screen for 7.5 hours a day – well it hits home. I am very fortunate that I have one of those adjustable desks that allows me to raise it and stand whenever I wish, which is now much more frequently.

As I raise my awareness, along with the rest of me, I notice that other people are standing by their work stations like gophers in a prairie field checking the landscape for potential dangers. While standing, I find that I can raise my foot up onto my desktop – the desk part that doesn’t raise up – and get a nice stretch going in my legs, thighs and other nether regions.

BOOMER TUNE ALERT

This is an easy one this week. Otis Redding died in a plane crash before his iconic hit “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,” became the first posthumous number one hit on both Billboard and the R & B charts and went on to garner Otis a posthumous Grammy, as well. He was only 26 when he died in 1967 but this song still makes me want to sit on a bench overlooking the ocean – however, perhaps I should now be standing instead.

From my position of heightened enlightenment I can view the smokers (now recognized as social pariahs in the building) huddling together, the mandatory 30 meters from the front door, having a smoke and sharing their various stories. The good news is that they are standing and not sitting – which would be so unhealthy.