You might recall that a couple years ago I wrote in gushing detail about my obsessive love for my fitness tracker, Esmerelda or Esme for short.

As with other fitness trackers, Emse was the type of gal who alerted me every hour if I hadn’t gotten my steps and –.

Oh, you might have noticed with that “was” that I’m referring to Esme in the past tense. No, I haven’t murdered her, but, well, keep reading.

Approximately a year ago, Esme started exhibiting a few weird characteristics. Most noticeably, she credited me for exercising when I had been doing less than nothing. In Esme’s world, since I was allegedly burning a couple thousand calories a day, I could also eat a few thousand calories every expletive day.

Although this might not seem like a big deal, it meant there was no need for me to input my food into the app because, at the end of every day, I allegedly had oodles of banked calories just begging to be consumed.

Also, Esme started glowing in the dark. It was as if The Child from The Mandalorian had swallowed a lightbulb and then crept into my room, no doubt looking for frog eggs to eat. I could not sleep with that green light worming its way behind my closed eyelids, so I removed Esme at bedtime.

To review, all this meant there was no need for me to log my food or my sleep, two of Esme’s reasons for existing.

To make matters worse, Esme also started exhibiting issues with her battery. When I contacted the company, they said, yep, there’s a problem, so we’ll give you a discount on a new model.

Uh, no thanks.

I made do with Esme. She continued to buzz me hourly (assuming I hadn’t already gotten my steps) whilst providing me a handy way to keep up with my water and the days I legit exercised (I input it manually).

But a few weeks ago, the battery pretty much quit working. It would be at 100 percent at, let’s say ten o’clock, and down to 12 percent by noon. I found myself charging it every couple hours just to keep it from dying.

Then, after a week when I barely communicated with Esme due to a migraine, I said to myself, “Self, what are you even doing?”

Since that day, she has remained on the table.

And you know what? I’m still drinking water and I’m still exercising five days a week. Sure, I keep track of these activities by pen and paper, but trust me, I have enough of both.

And, no, I don’t jump up every hour on the hour to get my steps. To be honest, though, that’s a relief because Esme had become something of a nag.

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.

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