I Turned Off the Step Count

Four years. Four years of ten thousand steps a day, near enough without a miss. I had the streak on the app to prove it. There were days I walked round the kitchen table at quarter to midnight to get the last four hundred in. I'm not proud of that but I'm not exactly ashamed either. It kept me moving through a redundancy and a divorce and a winter where I didn't much fancy anything. Then this Wednesday. Raining, the properly Glaswegian kind that comes at you sideways. I'd been up since five with the wee one's teething and I got to eight o'clock at night on about six thousand steps and I looked at the watch, and the watch looked at me, and I thought: no. I didn't go out. I sat on the couch with a tea and watched something rubbish and let the streak die. Here's the thing I didn't expect. Nothing happened. The sky didn't fall. Thursday I went for a walk because I wanted to, along the canal, and I didn't look at the number once. It was a good walk. There was a swan being a nuisance at a dog. Friday I took the watch off altogether. Left it on the bedside table with the face down, like it'd done something wrong. My pal Kirsty said, so are you just not exercising now? And I said no, I walked to hers, that's forty minutes, I just don't know how many steps it was. She said that sounds like a loophole. Maybe it is. But I've noticed I'm walking more, not less. Not further exactly. More. Down to the shop instead of driving. Round the block with the buggy when she won't settle. Because it's not a task anymore, it's just what my legs do when I let them. The watch is still on the bedside table. I charged it once, out of guilt. It said welcome back and asked if I wanted to set a new goal, and I put it face down again. Six thousand steps on a wet Wednesday. Best thing I've done all year.