I dislike being part of a trend. It makes me feel like a statistic. But as of 1/8/2018, I am apparently one of 25 million active Fitbit users. If you are smarter than I am and have managed to avoid this whole wearable tech thing, you may not be aware that a simple Fitbit, like the one I have, will count your steps and track your sleep. The fancier ones can do amazing things apparently, car repairs, legal advice, Freudian analysis, but I just have a basic one. If this wearable tech thing is a cattle call, apparently a lot of us are mooing. Damned if I'm not mooing too.
I live in Minnesota. It's been cold this winter, so my husband @preparedwombat and I have not gotten our normal amount of walking in. Here we are at a local restaurant, our smiles undoubtedly brightened by the fact that you can't see our sagging mid-sections after our season of sloth.
Since joining the herd of Fitbit users a couple of years ago, I have managed 10,000 steps a day pretty regularly, usually 4 times a week. Last Spring on a trip to Las Vegas--I was there to attend a conference and @preparedwombat came along to check out the poker tables—he and I took a couple of days to see the sights and logged a whopping 22,000 steps on a single day. Pretty good for a couple of geezers. But this Winter, with bleak black cold a constant before work and after, and a long cold drive to the mall the dues you must pay to get a measly plasticine mall walk, I have been managing only 5,000 steps a day or so, if that. So it was with determination and slightly creaky fortitude that I set out on a walk yesterday afternoon, sporting my trusty Fitbit on my wrist.
Conditions were not perfect but were so much better than they have been, that I got a little excited, maybe went a little overboard. It was afternoon, the sun still shining down from the steely sky so I could easily avoid the patches of ice. There was some wind off the lake (which lake? this is Minnesota, pick one) but it wasn't too bad. I had forgotten a scarf, but the collar on my coat is big so I turned it up against the wind, pulled my hat down tighter over my ears, and kept walking. There are a couple of long walks near our house that we normally take. One is more rural, going past a little lake and the last of the fields in our neighborhood, and one goes into town, past churches and bars and our town's little movie theater, skirting the edge of the big lake. It was a day for heady excess. I went crazy. I did both walks.
I had a great audio book going, Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama, (He reads the audio book himself. Sniff. I miss him so.) The wind was tolerable, the shoes were good, someone else was cooking dinner so I wasn't needed at home, and I didn't have our elderly dog Bacci with me so no worries about keeping the walk brief to get her in out of the cold. I just kept walking at a pretty brisk pace for about two hours.
It was nearly perfect. Great book, great walk, good exercise, plenty of fresh air, lovely scenery, a little alone time. All good, but for one thing. I got home, flumped into a chair and plugged in my phone which had run out of battery while I was out. I checked the Fitbit app and stared, blinking, disbelieving. Only 30 minutes of the 120 I'd walked had been captured, only 7580 steps. That's just not right, thought I. I did more steps than that, thought I. Credit where credit is due, thought I with a kind of rising panic. Fair is fair after all!
The Fitbit battery was low when I left, but it has never been so low that it refused to track my steps. I have always been able to cajole into doing its job. So I plugged the Fitbit into its charger, plugged the phone into its charger and waited for sweet justice ....that never show up.
I don't know what happened.
Some combination of the low battery and the low temperature caused my Fitbit to fall asleep, completely lose interest. Hell, for all I know it is secretly seeing another middle-aged woman's wrist behind my back. Probably a younger woman. I really don't know. What I do know is that I had a very hard time not getting my little pat on the head, my little Fitbit fix of validation for my efforts. Dinner was ready and I was hungry, but as I sat there at the table with the family, where I should have been focused on them and the fine meal, I kept going back to the phone and syncing and re-syncing it with the app, trying to make my Fitbit wake up and tell me I'm a good girl.
Walking is its own reward.
I was a walker long before I got a Fitbit, and if I'm lucky, I will go on walking long after the zombie apocalypse comes along, wearable tech is a distant memory, and we all have to walk miles each day to forage for food. I love walking and plan to go on doing it as long as I can. I guess the question must be asked though, is wearing a Fitbit on my wrist enhancing my experience of walking or taking away from it? By continually keeping this leash on my wrist to get my little "Atta Girl!" when I hit a steps goal, am I missing an opportunity to just be while I walk and get my zen on? It is worth pondering. Perhaps I'll take a walk next weekend and really think it through. And maybe I'll leave my Fitbit at home……just to show it.
images from pixabay and my iphone