Apple Watch Ankle Notes
By Veronica Zora Kirin
I’m lying in bed, curled in a ball, whispering to my ankle under the covers. More specifically, I’m whispering to my new Apple Watch. It’s 2AM, the time when the best ideas come. I must capture them before they dissipate into the ether.
We writers are used to a flurry of inspiration arriving in the middle of the night. We receive the Muses’ whispers in that twilight state so well that creatives like Thomas Edison covet it. To take advantage, he would nap with balls in his hands — when the balls fell, he’d hear them, wake, and immediately jot notes while the ideas were fresh in his head.
Historically, we writers struggle to take notes in the night. Turning on a light might wake anyone with whom we share the room. Leaving the room abandons any hope of retaining the inspiration. My strategy involved grabbing the inevitable paper and pen on my nightstand and scribbling keywords while blinded by the dark. Within moments, the thought would be jumbled by consciousness.
How, then, did this paper-and-pen writer end up whispering to an Apple Watch on her ankle?
Rewind to June. I’ve just completed a keynote speech for the University of Split, Croatia, startup competition. Compelled by the warm weather and cloudless summer skies, I prolonged my stay in my ancestral land of Croatia to enjoy a writer’s retreat on the nearby island of Brač. I chose an Airbnb in the quiet one-grocery-stand town of Pučišća (pronounced poo-chee-shcha), complete with a terrace built from marble harvested just across the bay. On my first evening, I watched the yachts come into the tiny harbor glowing in the sunset. The water was so clean one could see 40 feet down. The vistas of white marble cliffs meeting the sea brought tears to my eyes.
I felt the inspiration bubbling up inside me. However, as I relaxed in my lounge chair with a glass of Croatian wine in my hand, I noticed something else bubbling inside me. My throat had that feeling. You know, that feeling. The one that precedes the flu.
The next morning, I planned to write, but fate decided on another path. I woke in my beautiful seaside retreat with a throbbing head and aching joints. My body shivered. I was sweating. Coughing. I was ill and very far from help. I would later find out I had contracted COVID at the startup competition.
Three days of misery and I’ve run out of medicine. The only pharmacy was down the mountain and across the bay, too far for someone who must crawl to the bathroom. I had no thermometer, no pulse-ox reader, no heart monitor, and no way to discover whether I was in the danger zone. I’m a crowded half-hour bus ride plus a one-hour ferry ride away from the nearest hospital. I was writhing in bed with fever and pain, and in my lucid moments, I was afraid. I resolved to never be in that position again. I soon bought an Apple Watch as a health and safety device. It would check my oxygen, pulse, and temperature, all critical vital signs indicating the severity of COVID and other illnesses.
What was a fear-based purchase, however, surprised me as it engendered itself as an important writing tool. I no longer get caught without a recording device. Whether on walks, camping trips, or an airplane, when an idea strikes and I’m away from pen and paper, I tap the voice notes app and tell it to my wrist. No more fumbling for my phone or digging in my pack for a crumpled receipt to write on. It feels like I’ve got a real-life secret spy watch like the ones we used to pull from cereal boxes. Mine actually records and transmits my messages — to my future self!
My wrists are too bony to sleep comfortably with the watch, so I bought an adjustable elastic band and spend each night with the watch on my ankle. My partner laughs every time I’m caught talking to my leg in bed. I look a bit like a baby trying to suck her toes. So be it. Whoever said writing was glamorous doesn’t have an Apple Watch attached to her ankle.
Veronica Zora Kirin is a queer Croatian/American writer who loves challenging the status quo. Kirin is cofounder of Anodyne Magazine, featuring art and lit about FLINTA* health. She is the author of “Stories of Elders,” documenting the high-tech revolution as lived by the Greatest Generation, which received the National Indie Excellence Award and was a finalist for the International Book Award. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have been published in Zero Readers, Adelaide, See You Next Tuesday, Unburied, Scare Street, Scars, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her debut memoir in Berlin. Read more at https://veronicakirin.com/books