This post is proving to be a trial to write.  This will be the third time I’ve tried, and it has been a while since I managed to write anything.  This is not for lack of desire, but generally motivtion and inspiration, as well as more recently the refusal of it to publish without erroring and deleting itself.  I have several half finished posts and dozens of stored ideas from the last year to testify to this self defeating phenomenon.  It takes a certain amount of excitement to overcome the distractions of books and iphone games.  However the inspiration to rekindle my literary furor has finally entered my life, and it is a chair. But not just any chair.  This is a chair designed for those people who might be called “seating challenged,” if you want to be slightly contemptuous and grammatically doubtful.  But I prefer the term “sedentary rebel”.  I will not be bound by common office seating conventions, nor doctors recommended lumbar support considerations.  I will sit cross-legged, with my feet tucked under, knees in front, or semi recumbent as I please, and damn the spinal consequences.  This is not actually hyperbole, I recently traded with my co-worker for an armless chair  because I couldn’t sit cross-legged comfortably.

Apparently I am not the only one who finds most chairs problematic, and someone has finally gone beyond complaining. Khalid Shafar has designed a beautiful chair, meant to encourage other forms of seating than the “knees bent, feet flat” method.  He states on his website that the chair is meant to act as a bridge between western furniture and Arabic culture’s traditional floor seated stance.   Beyond enjoying this idea of colliding and evolving lifestyles, I’m also just thrilled he’s designed a chair that looks comfortable to me, and yet beautiful.  I hope it goes into mass production someday, because I am quite sure it would become one of my favorite things.  It’s worth taking a look at his other designs.  Thanks also to DesignBoom for finding his chair, and for giving me something to become excited about again.

Flip Chair © Khalid Shafar 2013