oh my blog!- Laura Darby Singh -

There will come a day when I completely combust and lose my shit, but, if there’s some technology around to help me, I’m aiming for that day to be NOT today.

My life feels out of control. Between my more-than-full time job, my distance Masters programme, being a good friend, being a better wife, caring for an elderly and very beloved cat, and editing a novel for my agent and keeping up with publisher’s requests, I don’t know when I find time to sleep, let alone breathe.

To top it all off, my fancy Samsung phone had broken and had only just been “repaired” and returned, so, with my technological lasso/lifeline, I resynced my watch and decided it was also time to resync my life.

There’s an app for that.

Mostly because there’s an app for almost anything now.  I am going to make changes and give the reins over to my phone, that will push commands to me via my watch, and my life will get more structured and better.  Am I crazy? Probably, but the idea of letting “someone else” make decisions for me for a while sounds like bliss.

So much water

Drinking

I am a Coke Zero addict.  Once I have one,I have one chug, it rapidly becomes 100 ounces in a day. I sleep with a litre bottle next to my bed and chug from it first thing in the morning.  It’s probably bad for me, because most things are, so I’m going to try and replace it with water and, in the morning, tea.

I read an article about a guy who drank a gallon of water every day.  Everyone loves 30 Day Challenges these days, and the water gallon challenge is not really different than any of the others.  It’s seriously a thing, and most of the authors tout its wonders.

To monitor my water, I’m using Water Drink Reminder. It pushes notifications to my watch reminding me to drink water. It has cute widgets that give me a progress bar for how much water I’m drinking day-to-day.  It syncs with Google Fit, which is my go-to activity tracker, so it’s helpful in that it adds ounces to my goal for every day that I work out.

Good Habit Building

I keep a running tally in my head each day of things I need to do.  Does it sound exhausting?  It kind of is.  Lots of them are things for work, or the book, or the Masters, but it takes actual work to tally it all after a long day in the office.  In the office, I use Asana to keep track of my To Dos, but when I’m at home, I find myself with no mental energy to manage it all.

And, as my brain becomes more tired, or more stressed, or more sad, it all gets more difficult.

I downloaded Fabulous to have someone remind me to do basic things, like feel good about myself, eat vegetables, drink water, and take my vitamins.  It has a full array of pathways you can choose, and you can add habits in a custom format in case you want something outside the box.

I also made the choice to include Meditation in my “Evening Rituals.”  And, while I often walk through my beautifully landscaped work compound with friends in the afternoon post-lunch, now notifications will remind me to go walk too.

Sure, I can choose not to pay attention to the buzz on my wrist, but being reminded my someone who is not me to take care of myself in broader ways seems like a good move.

Better Eating

I loathe food blogging, and food logging, and having to figure out which arbitrary food listing best simulates whatever it was I had to eat that day.  Coupled with the fact that, in Nairobi,  I don’t eat processed foods much and don’t have a package to reference nutritional information.

I downloaded Lifesum and I like that it also syncs with Google Fit. I don’t know if I’ll continue using it if my mentality already registers it as cumbersome, but I’m going to try for a week.  In fact, I added “Log my Food” into my evening rituals for Fabulous just to try and keep me on track.

Sleep Tracking

I’m lucky in that I usually have no trouble sleeping, little trouble waking up, and generally copacetic sleep patterns.  But, as my stress levels have increased, I’ve been finding myself to be more tired, and less well-rested.

Enter Sleep As Android which is thankfully not-at-all Blade Runner-themed.  But I’ve set it up to wake me up at 6:30am, and monitor how well I’m sleeping in the night, and it sends me a notification when it is time to go to bed, which is really helpful.  Sometimes we cannot be trusted to regulate our own health; in fact, likely more often than not.  It also has a little quiz when you are dismissing the alarm to make sure that you’re actually awake and not just blindly swiping at your phone so that it will shut up.

Meditation

As I mentioned above,  Fabulous is telling me to meditate, but, for me, just being quiet in my own thoughts is kind of disastrous.  I downloaded Headspace, an app that offers guided meditation that, I’m assuming, changes a little every day.  I’m using the 10 day free trial, and I don’t know whether I really want to pay a “subscription,” for mental clarity and peace, which… maybe should speak to the root of the problem…

Exercise

These elements aren’t new to my routine, but it is nice to have Fabulous give me credit for working out.  I get bored easily, so, for the last couple of months at the suggestion of a childhood friend, I’ve been streaming new workouts daily from Beachbody OnDemand.  It’s a weekly cost that I’m happy to pay since it’s still cheaper than my most favorite Barre class in Nairobi, plus I can choose between high interval training, yoga, and things in between.  Poor Adam even tolerates doing workouts in programmes like Yoga Booty Ballet.

I also walk as much as possible, and my smartwatch tracks my steps and feeds them to Google Fit. I manually input all my workouts into Google Fit too, and it’s imperfect, but it gives me a good idea of how my month is going, fitness-wise.  Once you pause your workouts, gosh is it hard to keep track of how many days it’s been since you last sweated.

Anyway, we’ll see how I do at keeping it up. Maybe setting up trackers will be more effort than being my own tracker, but if I can supplant sanity with technology, I might be able to finally dream of electric sheep.