new device

I have never been what one might call "on the cutting edge" of technology. I did get an iPod in late 2001 and was the talk of the itty-bitty small town I was living in at the time, and I have relied on those moments since as my example of being "timely" with my gadgets.

And the iPod was a Christmas gift.

I didn't join Facebook until 2008. Twitter came to me in 2011 and I still don't Tweet with any regularity--I think I have maybe 10 followers. I am on LinkedIn, but it still lists a job I left about three years ago. I finally joined Instagram but I can't get out of the annoying habit of posting images to both Facebook and Instagram. I got my first iPhone juuuuuust before iOS 3 was released and I have been playing catch-up ever since. I'm trading in my iPhone 4s for a 5s as rumors swirl about an iPhone 6 getting released in late 2014. I still use my first iPad. I drive a 2004 VW. And as much as my fantastic hairstylist works otherwise, my hair always defaults to something akin to what Martha Plimpton wore in The Goonies. I can't even have a hip retro haircut.

This past week, I saw a device I had never seen before and I thought, HUZZAH! I'm going to be ahead of the curve. A woman I was working with was wearing it on her wrist. I thought it was a watch, but noooo. It tracked her walking movement and her sleep patterns. While we were together, she had walked nearly seven miles a day, and since we spent most of our time together, it meant I was walking nearly seven miles a day. But she had proof.

This woman, by the way, is a hummingbird of a person. She's tiny and has the most enviable arms--much like a bird might have if it were transformed into a person. They're well shaped and strong. So, of course, I noticed this little black wrist band.

As I mentioned, I was traveling last week and I was traveling without workout clothes or sneakers. (Do we call them sneakers? Running shoes? Workout shoes?) Anyway, due to circumstances beyond my control and due to a story way too long and a little too private to tell here, I was without warm-weather clothing for about a week.

I worked my way to a sports attire shop to buy some walking (?) shoes and as I was standing in line and making fun of the impulse purchase aisle--the aisle they make you stand in while you wait for a cashier, the aisle with  water bottles and workout journals--and declaring, "What kinds of things do the shop owners think people will buy and who impulse purchases things--hey, there's the wrist band Rachel was wearing!

I had an audience of cashiers as I went through my "impulse buys are stupid I think I'll buy this ridiculously stupid item on a whim" routine. And, as I put the $100 wrist band on the counter, the cashier maintained her poker face until I finally said, "Can you believe what an asshole I am?"

She laughed. Thank god.

In short (or long, really), I bought a Fitbit Flex. It's a bracelet you wear all day/all night with a small interface with little LED lights. When you get up in the morning, you tap it twice and see that you have only one light flashing. At the end of the day, the goal is to have five solid lights. 

 The Fitbit syncs with your phone (well, not my phone until I get that cutting edge iPhone 5s and upgrade to iOS 6) and tracks your walking steps (goal = 10,000), your sleeping patterns, and you can use the online tracker to record food and workouts and such. You can set it up to buzz at you as a reminder to get up from your computer and walk around the block or just stretch, which I definitely need. It's pretty cool.

Dali Museum. Very Serious.

So, I laced up my new walking/running/workout (seriously, what should I call them) shoes, donned my linen work skirt (no warm weather clothes means no shorts), and took a 40-minute walk along Bayshore Blvd. in Tampa while my sister and my brother-in-law went running (I'm still not ready to start running but good god am I ready to start skiing again). A quick trip to the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, and I had accomplished all 10, 000 steps. As someone who never reaches a goal, I was mildly disappointed. If I can reach this goal, I thought, it's not much of a goal at all. It's about an hour's worth of walking. I felt cheated and more than a little smug.

I need to get more sleep. Noted.

Then I came back to Maine where it's cold and snowy and icy and I hate walking outside. Yesterday, I was thrilled to see I had achieved four lights on my little Fitbit. Today, I have achieved one single light. Smug be gone.

And, to add to my humility, the FitBit products have been around since 2008. The super new gadget I'm wearing? May 2013. The super newest gadget that everyone is wearing now to be au courant? That's called a Fitbit Force, but people apparently are getting burns from the new gadget. Mild consolation when I find myself, yet again, just slightly behind the curve.