Home » Challenge » Weekend Writing Prompt #221 – Thwart

Weekend Writing Prompt #221 – Thwart

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A word prompt to get your creativity flowing this weekend.  How you use the prompt is up to you.  Write a piece of flash fiction, a poem, a chapter for your novel…anything you like.  Or take the challenge below – there are no prizes – it’s not a competition but rather a fun writing exercise.  If you want to share what you come up with, please leave a link to it in the comments.  I so wanted to use the more obscure definition of thwart but was thwarted by my lack of ability to find a way suitable to say what I wanted to say… another day, perhaps.

wk 221 thwart

Not to be Thwarted by Gadgets

 

A challenge issued from me to me for the year

(started on January 3rd, so’s not to hex myself)

Ten thousand steps per day

Totally doable

Marvellously on track more than seven months in.

My Fitbit however, decided to thwart me and falter before the end

What to do?

Get a different brand – counts steps, not movements

Keeps me on the honest path

 

Started at the same time… hmmm.. Koretrak 237 steps behind Fitbit. The gap grew exponentially as the day went on! No free steps given here.

89 thoughts on “Weekend Writing Prompt #221 – Thwart”

  4. Or a handsome young hunk of a man chasing you around the track. Those little fitness dictators will thwart you one way or the other. They’ll make you have lots of fits over the bits of exercise data they throw at you or make you feel like they stole from you.

    If you really want to feel thwarted, get an Apple Watch. I gave up my Fitbit when they partnered with Google, and Tristan gave me an Apple Watch. Closing all the exercise rings on an Apple Watch is 10 time more difficult than a Fitbit. Fitbits record any movement as activity. So when I worked out in the yard with a Fitbit, I got all kinds of steps and active minutes, sometimes I would get a bunch of stairs, also.

    A couple of Fridays ago, I hauled two loads of large rocks, hand loaded into my pickup truck, threw them in the big hole that had developed in the crossing over the ditch, and then shoveled crusher fines from the edge of the road into a wheel barrow, wheeled them over and dumped them in the hole over the large rocks. It took 15 wheelbarrow loads of crusher fines to fill the hole after I put the rocks in the hole. Then I took a sledgehammer to the concrete on one edge of the crossing to make a drainage channel. After three hours of working like a rented mule, my Apple Watch activity line advanced to 1/4 of what it thought I should do to complete the circle. Fitbit would have registered off the charts for that amount of work. I could have used a cute you woman cheering me on, but all I got were weird looks for the people who depend on that crossing to get to and from their houses.

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    • That could work… unless I got sidetracked by the handsome hunk and decided to do… never mind! Fits and bits, indeed!

      Fitbit is truly ridiculous. Every little movement is counted. I put on both watches, made my bed, opened the blinds, made my way to the kitchen. Fitbit: 200+ steps. Koretek: 0!

      You were ROBBED! I wanna say something else but this is a public forum…
      And how sweet are you to say. Thank you. You know I would have not only cheered, but helped you out!

      I think the important thing is you use one of them, and just go with that. My Fitbit was at the point that it needed to be charged twice per day so I just said to hell with it and decided to take this one. Bloody hell. The bastard doesn’t start counting steps until you’ve taken 10!! It does give most of them to you once it does start… So say, you take 25 steps, after 10, it jumps in and maybe loses one or two. And if you only take 6 steps, too bad, so sad. Don’t count! Very frustrating so I try not to look at it. I can tell you one thing, though. My 10K steps are now EARNED!

      Liked by 1 person

      • Having you cheer me on and helping would have made the task easy and fun.

        The Village and Conservency say I own the crossing so they don’t have to maintain it. But it’s a public crossing, and if holes like the one I filled don’t get repaired, a lot of people can’t get in or out. I have access to the ditch road on the eastern edge of my property, so I have an alternate way out. The other poeple don’t have alternate ways out, unless they came through my property. When not a soul who needs to use that crossing offers to help, I feel like being an old troll and saying “Who’s that acrossing my bridge?” Two neighbors who know that I’m not some illegal wetback, rented mule hired to fix the crossing, stopped and thanked me, and we had a chinwag, as Inchcock says. One neighbor was in her new all-electric Porshe Taycan and wanted me to check out her new car and to also check her out driving a $180K sports car in old ratty sweats. Yeah!

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        • Oh hell… I couldn’t have stopped at just cheering you on. I’m not one of those chicks who won’t get her hands dirty and show off my shiny wheels while you do what you do jus so I can cross!

          That’s ridiculous that a pubic crossing has to be maintained by a private citizen. I bet you feel like being the troll… Did all they do is thank you or actually offer to help with more than a friendly chinwag? Sheesh…

          Liked by 1 person

          • I know that you would be a great help. A chinwag was it, but at least that was two thanks out of ten people who drove in and out while I was working on the crossing.

            When my dad owned the road west of the crossing, my dad paid to have the crossing built. It replaced ao old rickety bridge. Since the road west of the crossing was really a public road, my dad turned it over to the county to maintain, but as far as the County and now the Village were concerned the crossing still belonged to us. I own the road from the crossing to our property at the end of the road. I guess I own the crossing too, but my survey does not include the crossing.

            Some of my neighbors, most of whom I’ve never met, do get my goat. And the neighbor’s, who don’t use the crossing, goats say Bah!

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          • Yeah… you are more gracious than I.

            The survey should at the very least include the crossing – it’s part of your property and if it was iffy, I’m sure that law about how long you use a property till it becomes officially yours, exists.

            Neighbours are funny that way. When they need you, they sure are neighbourly; when they don’t… pffft!

            You’re a good man, Tim. Oh wait. You could always put a toll – you wanna use my crossing? You gotta pay! 😉

            Liked by 1 person

  5. Good use of the word I have had many gadgets that thwarted me from accomplishing my goal. Right now, this iPad is one of them. I need to get off and work on other stuff but alas, I am thwarted once again by a gadget.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you, Jan. Awww… You’re just lonely coz you are missing your sweetie; which you wouldn’t quite so much if you were in Sturgis. It’s a tough one, I’m sure!
      Gadgets can be blamed for lots of time not spent doing what we maybe should be doing 😉

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  6. Yeah, I wonder how accurate any of them are, but it gives you a guideline. 😀 They measure some movements, but not all. I imagine, like me, you usually go over 10,000 anyway. I try to get so many miles and calories, and I really can’t figure it out.

    Liked by 2 people

  11. Q

    Seeing those two side by side is like switching from CNN or MSNBC to Fox News. What is going on with that discrepancy? Hell, my Fitbit has been giving me shit lately. Yesterday it went to sleep for a tad, and I thought it was dead. Of course, like my former Beta fish Marcellus, it was just playing with my head to get a rise out of me. Which is why I won’t mourn its passing when it does finally decide to leave this earth. So long as it doesn’t happen too soon, of course.

    I’d say you are on the right track. Let the numbers compel you now, but come 2022, the inspiration will come from the work you put in to get there. And at that point, both devices can take a flying leap if they so choose 😉

    B

    Liked by 1 person

  18. My Garmin recalculates my goal steps every day based on the previous day’s steps. I try to ignore it, but it keeps saying, “move.” I respond that I must write. It does not care, “move!” LOL. I almost wish I’d never bought the thing. 🙂

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    • I finally removed the vibration telling me to move. Lemme tell you, come January 2, my Koretrak will be demoted to watch. This challenge I set myself up for is a royal pain in the ass! I dream of those days where I can veg in my jammies and watch TV all day! Steps be damned! Next year’s challenge will be hella different, tell you what! 10K steps per day? Pffft! Exercise will still be there but not this kind 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      • I exercise a lot, but I vary it. Walking (indoor track, outside normal, or trails) gym stuff, and/or swimming. The damn Garmin wants to run my life! 🙂 But I decide. LOL.

        Liked by 1 person

        • Exactly. As do I. But giving myself 10K steps makes cycling not so “beneficial”. Pedalling does not give the same number of steps. I’ll be mixing it up big time next year. I do now, but always had to take those darn steps into consideration!
          And it’s great that you do. It keeps us young. And to hell with the Garmins, the Fitbits, the Koretraks, I say! 😀

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