Fitness Tracker

My mother gave me an activity/fitness tracker for Christmas 2015.

Aside from a few days in the beginning, I wore this thing, on my wrist, every day of my life. The days I forgot, I felt the way others did: This feels like a waste of walking. I'm not even getting credit for it. I linked the phone app to my food diary app. In addition to step count, I started tracking how much water I drank on the daily, how much I slept every night, my weight, my distance, my other activities.

On Black Friday, November 2017, I upgraded the model I use. New model did everything the old one did, but also tracked the quality of my sleep and my heart rate, counted floors climbed, had breathing exercises, it was a watch, an alarm, a stopwatch, it told me when I had unread emails. I continued to wear it every day. I dutifully charged it every 4 days. I paid good money for it. You can imagine how stunned I was when it died on me.



My fault entirely. I wore it into the ocean. I went on vacation for a week. I took it off every single time I went down to the pool; I dealt with the idea of missing steps between the hotel room and the pool area (quite far, actually). The day I walked into the very calm waters of the Caribbean Sea, I kept it on.

I think when your brain lets go for a week and you're surrounded by beautiful things, you just don't think of your activity/fitness tracker. My partner and I were wading around in the turquoise waters and he pointed to my wrist. "You still have that on. Is it waterproof?"

"I...don't know. I don't remember. I think it's water resistant?" I look at my tracker which still showed me the local time. "Still works. It's 1 p.m."

I looked at it a little later. Dead.

I take it off and rinse it in fresh water. We drive to a local supermarket.

"Donde esta el arroz?"

...

So it's about a month later and I've started wearing a regular wristwatch again. It had been years, so I dug it out of my old things and had the battery replaced at a jewelry store in the Skyway. I'd gotten so used to wearing something there and not pulling my smartphone out to look at the time. I can tell my activity level is not where it was. Since I got back from vacation, there has been no device to ease me back to the real world; nothing to remind me to drink more water or get to bed or to walk instead of taking a bus. I think buying a new tracker would be worth the money but I don't think I should be spending as much on an exact replacement. Or maybe I should go the other way and spend more? I thought I would wait and save some money and look for a deal. Other days I wonder if I am too reliant on seeing the data tracked in the app?

I'm charging the old one right now to see if it still works.

What gets you off the couch?