A strange side The effect of the year of the pandemic has been a gradual and reluctant adjustment. to a new normal. »Things that would have seemed absurd a year ago now seem banal: getting close to a zoom birthday party, covering your face in public, turning the kitchen table in a home office, or greeting your loved ones with this weird ghost hug gesture to maintain a distance of 6 feet. It’s strange, but not surprising, how quickly you can get used to things.
Much of my “new normal” has involved moving my inner life outward and my outer life inward. Dinners are picnics now, but my office is confined to my apartment. I meet up with friends for weekend hikes but see the doctor for virtual visits via my phone. Probably the most ridiculous example of this is that I have now replaced my commute, and the incidental exercise of being a person in a city, with a miniature treadmill that I walk on every working day. A year ago, the image of me walking over it from my makeshift “home office” would have seemed like a joke. Now that seems to be a very beautiful part of my day.
In the beginning, the reasons for buying a small treadmill were practical. I wanted to revive my step count, which once reflected a life of urban splendor but now mirrored the turns I made between the bed, the fridge and the dining table turned into a desk. I channeled visions of Steve Jobs, who enjoyed attending his meetings while walking around Apple’s campus in Cupertino, and Joanna Coles, who ran Cosmopolitan from the treadmill desk into his office, intimidating his colleagues even more by walking on it in heels. Nellie Bowles, the reporter for The New York Times, described her working life on a treadmill desk as “ideally 2018. I imagined how accomplished I would feel after a day of walking, knowing that I had reduced hours of exercise in the workday.
Like Bowles, I opted for a portable model, designed specifically for walking. (Coles used a standard treadmill, the one you can jog on.) WalkingPad A1 Pro measures approximately 4 feet long and 2 feet wide. You can fold it in half, and it’s still short enough to fit under a sofa. That’s an advantage over a full-capacity treadmill, as is the price: mine cost just under $ 600. It has no handlebars. A miniature remote control its a speed, which reaches a maximum of 3.75 miles per hour – about the pace of a brisk walk. I slipped it under a standing desk and stepped on it.
