As the planet tilts on its axis and the angle of the orbited star becomes oblique, some people enjoy seasonal coffee. Others, in temperate zones, lay down with socks and shoes on lest they find themselves compelled to run out into the night to escape the fear. The cold can be bitter, and toes become increasingly dear as they are lost.

Sleep is important. Practically every biological function is subject to eventual disorder in the absence of sleep. The hale are enfeebled, the staid wax erratic, the rational grow deranged for the want of effective repose. Like and repost? However well a person is, they are certainly less so for want of sleep. For a long time disordered sleep, or even simply low quality sleep, was only ever testified to by the words of bedfellows or the bottom of yet another empty coffee cup. Anyone wanting a more complete accounting had to sleep (or attempt to) in a strange bed, trailing wires, watched over by the overnight technicians of a clinical practice. The medical setting is still the gold standard. More often, it’s excessive. If one needs to answer accurately the perennial practitioners posed question “how have you been sleeping?” a nightly average hours is enough. That’s sometimes harder than one may expect. It’s easy to over or under estimate one’s sleep particularly if at the moment one is feeling chipper (or like death at just above room temperature). And forget about obstructive sleep apnea or even just snoring, alone, unaided, it’s impossible to know. Enter the fitness tracker, the smartwatch. This is not about counting steps or calories, resisting water while plotting GPS coordinates and punctuating streaming services with notifications. Here, I’ll only be concerned with “sleep tracking” in whatever depth and breadth applies to the particular device. There will be no slick photos, no paid opinions, no ad copy. I’m no salesperson. Images where they’re of value will be simple, quickly executed line drawings. Every effort will be my own, motivated always by that terrible fear.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I certainly hope I manage to.