Walking

I walk every day. Sometimes with intent to get some much needed exercise. Sometimes it is just to give our fur kids Rose and Lily an opportunity to take care of their needs outdoors. I enjoy walking. It is an opportunity to enjoy nature. Feel the wind on your face. The sun shining on your skin. Hear the bark of a squirrel. The barking of another dog. The wail of an ambulance siren. I use a couple of different ways to track my walks. When I take the dogs out for their needs my steps are measured by my Fitbit. So far Fitbit says I have worn my trackers for a total of 14,972,382 steps, or 7,556.06 miles. It also says I have climbed the equivalent of 13,138 floors of stair steps. I'm currently on my third one of their trackers. Sweat and dirt are not the trackers friend.

When I take my long walk I use an application on my phone called Map My Walk. It utilizes GPS technology to track and map where I have walked. I haven't used this application as long but I do like the mapping feature. It did have one feature that I have finally turned off. It is able to provide voice coaching. So every quarter mile it would tell me how far I have walked, my pace during the walk and the total time elapsed since I started. It finally dawned on me that the voice feedback was ruining my walks. I wasn't listening to the birds in the trees. I wasn't feeling the sun and wind on my face. I wasn't paying attention to Rose and Lily. I was doing math problems in my head. How much faster does the next mile or quarter mile have to be so that I was walking 3.5 miles an hour? I would get irritated if the dogs wanted to stop and investigate some smell or pee for about the 100th time on that walk. Why can't they both go at the same time? We walked 10 feet and you want to pee again? Come on I need to make some time here. Every second I stop just makes getting my time right that much harder. Walking wasn't enjoyable. I'm retired. What's the rush? Ok the walk takes longer. The other day we walked about 5 miles. Map My Walk says it took me over 19 minutes to walk each mile. It wasn't chirping at me every quarter mile and I really enjoyed my walk.

So, what is the lesson here. I guess for me it was gaining an understanding that technology should not be something that interferes with our enjoyment. When a device, or a program or a characteristic of an application becomes a problem we have to be willing to pull the plug. Make some changes. Technology should enhance our experiences not rule them. Now I walk in blissful silence except for the music that plays in my head. I have one Christmas song I enjoy, Burl Ives singing It's a Holly Jolly Christmas. The other day while I was walking that was stuck in an endless loop in my brain. While it was playing in there amid the sounds of Tybee I thought about how strange it was. When I hear it in my head it is not my voice singing it that I hear it is his. Mike here is where the question becomes philosophical. Are we really dead if someone remembers us? Did old Burl stop by and have a walk in my brain? I think both happened. It's okay, he's welcome any time. Maybe after Christmas he will change the words a bit for me so it is a Holly Jolly day on Tybee.