David Sedaris' God is the Apple Watch
When facing death, I'll probably be thinking of my circles, too.
David Sedaris walks at least 10 miles every day. Some days he’ll walk more – 22, say, which he can “do in his sleep.” He’s done it for nearly 1800 days in a row, which he knows, because his Apple Watch tells him, as he explains in this interview from this morning.
I get it. On my best days, I wake up at 4:55am (!). I am very intentional about my phone use – or, rather, not using it – in the morning. I make sure that I’m turning off my alarm while my notifications stay silenced until 7:30am, so that I have a full morning uninterrupted.
And yet, I RACE to get my watch on my wrist so that I get the point to count as standing for one hour, and I can close the circle by 3pm. (As I’m writing this, it’s about to turn to 6am, so I’ll need to go refill my (half-caf, sorry) coffee and get the third hour.)
In 2020, I had a killer streak going and loved to see the full circles all the way down my phone. Just rows and rows and rows of perfect little targets that I could fly an arrow right into. Then, I got Covid. I was in bed all god damn day. I didn’t even put my watch on because I couldn’t bear to look at the empty circles or, worse, manage the shaming alerts of “Get moving to close your circles!” that come in at, like 6:30am.
Once I healed, I looked at the break in the rows. I didn’t feel grace for letting my body rest, or gratitude for my health and coming back to my routine when so many others didn’t. I was pissed.
We took this professional personality test once at work, the DISC assessment, which I still think about it multiple times a week. My results were DI – which, in short, for the purposes of this post, basically means I’m motivated by results and recognition. Which is a perfect storm for this thing on my wrist. I need to see that I closed the circles and I need this machine to tell me I did a good job doing it. Otherwise, I’m standing in the bathroom at night, brushing my teeth, fuming because the 20 jumping jacks I just did only burned 3 calories and I need 17 more.
Walking - hell, just moving - has been tough lately because I recently injured my back. I still close my circles most days, but it’s not as easy as it used to be. Perhaps I’ll take a cue from David Sedaris. He once was on a plane going across time zones and just stood in place moving his arms for 90 minutes to keep the record going. Another time he gave his watch to a woman at a book signing and told her to go walk two miles so he could close the rings. (Hilarious.) I could just find creative ways to close them and maintain those beautiful rows.
Another option: Sedaris got to the Apple Watch because he stopped using Fitbit when he was “friends” (in quotes) with another woman who kept beating him by, say, a quarter mile. Rather than blocking the data and doing it for himself, he switched hardware entirely. So I could just change the game entirely and switch what I’m doing.
Or, this, from the David Sedaris interview: If I were to be crossing the street and I looked up and I saw a car speeding toward me, my first thought would be “my watch.”
Yeah. That’s the kind of commitment I can get behind.