Fitbit Thoughts: The Lives of Others

Last Christmas I asked for a Fitbit, and was generously gifted one by my significant other. I wanted one for the same reason every other Fitbit user has one, to track my daily steps, which to my horror, was/is quite pitiful. I’m not lazy, per se, I just work a 9-to-5 desk job and in the evenings I just want to read, eat, watch T.V., and sleep. However, since rocking this super fashionable rubber step tracker, I have felt accountable to the number that mocks me daily; sometimes it reads 10,000 steps other days it reads 3.5K steps. Needless to say, I have started to walk more to show that number who’s boss.

This act of walking would make me look less creepy, say if I was walking a dog, or with someone else, but nope, I walk on, and on these walks, I am even more of a creep as I house shop. You know the act because you do it to: You go for a Sunday drive to look at houses; you check out the nearby open house, not because you want to buy it, but because you want to see what’s inside; and you, like me on these evening walks, glimpse inside windows if the curtains are open and the lights are on.

That is what I do on my Fitbit-10K-a-day walks: I house shop. I unplug from my phone, and from other distractions, and tune in to the stories untold by the houses I pass. I am intrigued by the story every house has, its past and its present. Who lives in it now, and what do they do, but most importantly, what does it look like inside? I have taken it one step further and added careers to the owners of these homes. For example, on one of the streets I frequent I am positive a witch (obviously there has to be one) lives in the house on the corner with the magical turret overlooking the neighbourhood and the windows that are never open. I met her once as she was sweeping her stoop while a grey cat, that wasn’t hers – she mentioned this fact twice – circled her legs purring. We had a nice, albeit brief chitchat. Continue north, and we’ll meet a bookseller, I know this because there are bookshelves that are overflowing with books in the living room and the front foyer, and there’s even a bookshelf on the front porch – I often wonder if the mail-person sometimes grabs a book while delivering the mail. The bookseller’s neighbour is a doctor, while a graphic designer, a drifter, and retired elementary school teacher live in the Tudor-style home turned apartment across the street. Eventually I’ll end up back at my house and wonder if people think the same thing as they pass my home: Are they curious about the lives and the stories being lived in this little old house of mine? Maybe.

After all, it is human nature to be intrigued by the lives of others. If we weren’t, our media landscape, the outlets that willingly allow users to invite people into their lives via stories, tweets and posts, would look a lot different, possibly be non-existent. Memoirs, biographies, epistolary novels (I love books that are narrated through letters or diary entries, it’s like I’m participating in the secret), would never be written, and many documentaries would be left untold. So, my curiosity for the lives of others wagers on one tracked step at a time.