4,062,393.
If the pedometer on my phone is to be believed then the above number is how many steps I’ve walked this year.
Four million, sixty-two thousand, three hundred and ninety-three steps. That’s 2031.2 miles since January 1st 2022, or for anyone more comfortable with kilometres: 3268.9. I suppose too another metric would be just over twice the length that the Proclaimers would be willing to walk just to be the man who wakes up next to you.
Initially I was dubious about trusting my pedometer, especially when it came to measuring distances based on my steps. But then last year, when I established the walk I make to or from uni every day (weather and schedule depending which direction I go), I realised that I could digitally trace out the exact distance—and handily it’s exactly 5 miles. So over the course of a few days I did the walk, checked my pedometer, and without fail the number was always within a few steps of 10,000. By virtue of that, calculating distances travelled against my step count has become remarkably easy.
In the statistics of my life I find great reprieve from the chaos of existence. Like how last week I tried to calculate how many hours I’d spent on the motorway. And how I keep track of every book I’ve read. There’s great peace in calculation. Absorbed in the solid abstraction of numbers, and the repetitive action of data entry. This was particulalry pronounced on Thursday night when I spent 35 minutes inputting 308 days of steps into my calculator. As I did so I could trace back various states of mind across the year in the rise and fall of the orange bars. I could see the habitual 5 miles during term time, the habitual 10 of summer. I could see the days where I was hungover and didn’t get out of bed, days where I’d wake up and just see how far I could walk (the year’s record so far being 35,748 steps, or 17.874 miles), or the days where I was busy with work and walked into the night instead. Days fractured by short walks between flats and pubs, or days when I was depressed and either stayed indoors or walked into oblivion to avoid drowning in it.
I see these sorts of calculations as being in the same taxonomy as taxonomy itself. Tracking one’s steps isn’t quite entomology, but the act is undoubtedly satisfying the same sense of curiosity baked into humanity’s obsessive desire to itemise all of existence. Be it the exhaustive stratification of flora and fauna, or the writing of dictionaries and encylopedias. We have documented and enumerated the biggest things we know of and even found ways to look inside atoms and make sense of them. But there was more to matter, so we looked closer and discovered sub-atomic particles, knocked that on the head and discovered quarks. Perhaps something yet smaller remains to be discovered and added to the inventory. And if there isn’t we’ll still continue our search for new species and trace back their family trees and our family trees and map out the stars and ocean floors. Grasping for order in the chaos.
It seems we have no choice in the matter, that this desire to create order is just something we do. A way of making sense of the world, of ourselves in the world, and then too for entertainment. How many smarties are in the jar? How long is this string? How many steps have I walked this year?
I like how walking makes me think. How the rhythm of my steps impacts the rhythm of my thoughts. If I’m stuck on a problem, be it creative or personal, a walk often feels like the only way to really approach it. I can mull or I can just take in the world around me, letting my subconscious do the work instead. This particular mode of thinking is nicknamed ‘the nightshift,’ and is incredibly helpful as a means of tackling certain issues. Stimulate your brain with something else and by embracing the spontaneity (which is just another word for chaos) of the world around you your subconcsiousness can carry on making the connections it needs to make until you encounter the final piece of the puzzle, which may be as innocuous as a crack in the pavement or the bark of a dog, and the answer reveals itself to you.
This is why I prefer walking in the city and its environs as opposed to nature. It’s not to say that I don’t love hiking, but there’s just something about towns and cities and suburbs and everything that comes with them that obsesses me. The sense of awe is different. You can drift aimlessly and follow any route you desire without worrying about going off the track, or night falling, or running out of food and water. Obviously there are parts of any city that aren’t conducive to walking, or are more unsafe than others, but there’s just something about it. I think that even though I’m by myself, sometimes with my headphones in, others not, that this is a way of connecting with people just as much as it is myself. Seeing different types of houses and flats, hearing flashes of conversation, thinking about the people who built the roads or painted the walls, that sort of stuff.
And then too, my being a man helps things massively. I still have to keep my wits about me, but there are certainly less threats presented as a result of this. It always makes me a little sad when I have to go and meet my girlfriend somewhere of a nighttime because her walking back alone just wouldn’t be safe (and if it was, there’s that very reasonable underlying fear that it isn’t). Not just sad because of the insidious reasons for having to accompany her, but because she doesn’t get to experience aimlessly wandering about in the dark alone, which is one of absolute favourite things to do.
It’s 5:30am as I write this. Part of my existence’s chaos is a chronic inability to sleep. Not even the birds are awake yet. But it has its perks. If I get ready now, make some porridge and have a cup of coffee, I can go for a stroll and make my way up to Queen’s Park, sit on the same rocks that people have sat on since the Iron Age and watch the sunrise. Just as we have no choice in the matter of seeking order in the world, nor does the sun in the matter of rising and setting. You can’t always see it because of the grey, but it is a slight comfort amidst all this chaos. And so far, as one final calculation here, based on my 27 years, 2 months and 17 days, that’s 9940 respective sunrises and sets that have had no choice but to happen in my life. 19,880 moments of certainty among an infinite number of uncertainties.