Photo attached: my fitness watch informing me that my stress levels are apparently through the roof while I sit comfortably at my work from home job watching horror movies and reviewing technical support calls for idiocy. I mean….accuracy.
The thing that makes this warning so annoying is that it almost never happens when I’m actually feeling stressed.
I’m not arguing with my partner. I’m not dealing with an emergency. I’m not running naked from a rabid alligator. Usually I’m doing something incredibly exciting, like sitting at my desk compiling spreadsheets or critiquing call recordings.
Yet there it is again.
High Stress Detected.
Thanks, watch.
What’s even stranger is that I’ve been getting occasional warnings about irregular ECG readings too. Not constantly, but often enough that I’ve noticed a pattern: they tend to show up at random times when my conscious brain is convinced everything is perfectly fine.
The more I think about it, though, the more I realize my body may know something my brain hasn’t quite caught up to yet.
Over the last year I’ve changed almost everything about my life.
I’ve been working on my health after learning that familial high cholesterol isn’t something I can simply out-exercise or out-supplement away. I’ve been experimenting with diet changes, adding more exercise, drinking hibiscus tea, researching every supplement under the sun, and trying to take better care of a body that is now firmly in its fifties and increasingly interested in filing formal complaints.
I’ve started losing weight (unintentional but i’ll take it) and becoming more active.
I’ve been spending more time outdoors hiking, exploring the old stomping grounds at the nature preserves, and wandering through places where I occasionally make questionable decisions involving flooded trails.
I’ve become a Mimi, which is somehow both the most wonderful and most surreal thing that has ever happened to me.
I’ve been thinking deeply about identity, growth, and the decision to start using they/them pronouns. That wasn’t a sudden decision. It came after years of self-reflection and figuring out what feels authentic.
I’ve been reconnecting with creativity through blogging, journaling, YouTube videos, expanding my photography realm and finding ways to tell my story.
I’ve been planning trips to Louisiana to spend time with my dad and bring home his prized truck that he’s gifting to me.
And now, perhaps biggest of all, we’ve bought our first house.
Our first house.
After years of feeding rent checks into what often feels like a giant money-disposal machine, we finally have a place that belongs to us.
It’s beautiful.
I’m excited beyond words.
We’ve already begun moving things in.
My new desk is set up in my new home office.
And yet, every so often, it still feels unreal.
Like at any moment someone is going to call and say there has been some terrible misunderstanding.
That house isn’t yours.
Get your shit and go back to your regularly scheduled renting.
The funny thing about stress is that excitement and anxiety often wear the same disguise.
Your nervous system doesn’t always distinguish between “something terrible is happening” and “everything is changing.”
Sometimes it’s just change.
And there has been a lot of change.
Good change.
Wonderful change.
Life-changing change.
Maybe my watch isn’t detecting stress because I’m unhappy.
Maybe it’s detecting that I’m carrying the weight of a season where nearly every part of my life is evolving at once.
The conscious part of me feels calm.
The subconscious part may still be standing in the middle of the room surrounded by moving boxes, family milestones, health goals, road trips, new identities, future plans, and a mortgage, screaming internally.
So when my watch starts yelling at me while I’m sitting peacefully at work, maybe I shouldn’t immediately assume something is wrong.
Maybe it’s just my body reminding me that even good things require energy.
Maybe excitement, gratitude, hope, anticipation, uncertainty, and change all get tossed into the same bucket by a nervous system that’s trying its best to keep up.
Or maybe my watch is just being dramatic.
Honestly, both explanations seem equally plausible.
And as I sit here looking at a photo of that warning on my wrist, I can’t help but think of a lyric that keeps popping into my head:
“This is not my beautiful house…”
Except this time, somehow, it is.
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