Sometimes simple things can break you. Benign things repeated time and time again can finally reach a threshold that leaves a scar – scratch marks burned on the wall of ones consciousness like ravines gouged out of hard rock by the persistence of a swollen river. It is not an inherent danger of the act, but its repetition that finally wears one out.

I have been carrying a beeping device around. Every thirty minutes a faint beep sounds – a precursor to the inflation of a cuff around my arm – and then I must stretch my hand out for one more data point to be acquired. At first it was novelty and I tried to anticipate when the next beep might sound. But with each beep and straightening of the arm,a certain weariness descends. I want out of the control the little device has over me. Sadly, the only choice I had was in accepting..The consequence was chosen for me at the same time.