I think this post is going to be a bunch of little updates on things. I’ve got a lot of thoughts in my head, and a bunch of things I want to blog about. Let’s see how far I get through them before running out of steam!
First, an update on some boring mundane stuff. We got four new washing machines installed in my apartment building, so I was able to do all of my laundry in one fell swoop this morning, in my own building. (See this post for a previous update.) Of course, the new machines cost a little more than the old machines. And one of the new machines is already broken.
My other big apartment-related issue lately has been my smoke detector. It went off in the middle of the night Sunday night, twice. Not the actual alarm, but the double-beep that normally indicates a low battery. I’d replaced the battery only about a month ago, so I opened a maintenance request with my landlord. The maintenance guy came in on Monday, told me he thought my new battery wasn’t strong enough, and replaced it. Of course, he was wrong, and I got the low battery warning in the middle of the might again, on Tuesday night. So I opened another request, and the maintenance guy came in and replaced the unit. (I was working in the office on that day, so didn’t get to talk to him about it.) I hoped that would be the end of it, but then, the next day, I came home from work and saw that the new unit had come loose and was now hanging from the ceiling by the wires that hook it into the building system. I opened another maintenance request on that, on Thursday, but the maintenance guy didn’t come in on Friday, so now I guess I have to deal with a smoke detector dangling from the ceiling for the whole weekend. At least it’s not beeping.
This is all completely useless information to anyone other than me, of course, but it makes me feel a little better to write it up and get it out of my head.
And this is all background to talk about my general state of mind, which has been influenced by (1) not getting enough sleep on multiple occasions this week, and (2) feeling like everything is an uphill battle that always takes multiple tries, just to get to a semi-stable situation that isn’t any better than the previous semi-stable situation.
On the positive side, I’ve got a nice move streak going on with my Apple Watch right now. I’m at 40 days, which is the longest streak I’ve had, by far. Generally, if I get a move streak going, the watch suggests that I up my move goal, and I do that, and then I can’t meet it every day the next week, and the streak is broken. Or I get sick and rest for a day. So there’s a couple of interesting things going on here. First, that the watch isn’t asking me to up my move goal. And, second, that I’ve gone 40 days without getting sick. Which probably isn’t a lot for most people, but it’s a lot for me. So I’ve got at least one nice stable situation going this month! Plenty of walking!
Watch OS 11 will let you pause a move streak, apparently. I don’t think I’d ever bother doing that. It’s nice to have a streak going, if it motivates you to keep exercising. But I think it’s good to just let it reset once in a while. Or change the goal so you can’t meet it every day.
And here’s a funny video that’s related to the idea of walking for mental health. It’s actually a sneaker ad, of course, but it’s still kind of funny, and I definitely agree with it.
And that’s it for this post. I started writing some more stuff below about another topic, then realized that it didn’t belong in a post about laundry and smoke detectors.