In Apple Health, mental well-being is logged under the State of Mind feature. A mood entry is composed of three components: Valence (the 7-point scale), Descriptive Labels (feeling words), and Associations (life factors/context). Most days, I record one mood rating at a random time, covering how I feel in the moment, and once at the end of the day, I summarize the day. The model is simple: rating from one to seven, then a list of descriptive labels and impact associations from a pre-defined list. A while back, I made the completely arbitrary rule to pick only 1-3 (usually 3) items from each list. Some days, like the day I had a stroke in August, I get “anxious,” and occasionally I am “surprised” by life, but usually all my descriptive words are positive. My impact choices bounce around depending on the random time. “Partner” and “family” occur frequently. I am only here because of them.

Why did I add the arbitrary limit? I noticed in analyzing my mood data that I tended to check the same larger number of words every time. That was diluting the effect. Limiting to three saved that. Every time I pick words, I think about the emotion or the impact. I feel it more. It helps my feelings of gratitude and metta (the wish that all beings be happy).

There is a trick to this method. It doesn’t just measure happiness. It manufactures it. I pretty much always rate my mood as “very pleasant” because it pretty much always is. I’m not perfect. I have my “anxious” moments, like when I had the stroke and thought I was about to die, but it was just momentary anxiety, mostly focused on my poor family, who I hope would miss me. Very little of that anxiety was focused on me. I think I can fairly report that I am not afraid of death. No idea what happens after that. Maybe it just ends and the universe goes on without me. Maybe there is reincarnation or some sort of afterlife. I am ready for that, though those around me might not be. In the world of boundaries, I support them not being ready and would love it if I didn’t die before they were ready. But really, who is ever ready for the death of a loved one?

I was in the hospital room with my brother and mother when my mom passed away. She was sick. Very sick. Very uncomfortable, with pain every time the blood pressure cuff squeezed her. She was mostly out of it. Hank and I read to her and sat with her. She decided to stop treatment and do in-hospital hospice. They drugged her up on morphine, took away the beathing support and let her die. It wasn’t fast. The first night, they let us stay after visiting hours in case she died suddenly. Mom refused and kept breathing slowly. The next day, we were sitting there, she was not really awake and just stopped breathing. I counted thirty seconds before I told Hank, and then we called in the nursing staff to do their thing. We cried and called our sisters. We’d had many rehearsals of this with a multitude of ER visits from congestive heart failure. Hank had been to most. A few times, I flew up to Chicago for a few days to help. Tracy and Karen both did visits and had been to see Mom in the hospital a few days earlier. Rehearsals are not opening night. The real performance tastes different than all the practice, and it’s a taste that catches in your throat and won’t release you. Grief is hard work. Any sorrow I feel about my death is sorrow for the grief of my loved ones.

But grief is what we pay to have love, and the love is a far bigger win than the loss of the grief. I am oddly happy about that.

The Apple Health universe:

1. Valence Classifications (The Core Mood Scale)

When logging an emotion (momentary) or mood (daily), you select a position on a 7-point valence continuum:

1. Very Unpleasant (Deep Purple/Indigo)
2. Unpleasant
3. Slightly Unpleasant
4. Neutral (Cyan/Light Blue)
5. Slightly Pleasant
6. Pleasant
7. Very Pleasant (Warm Orange/Amber)

2. Descriptive Labels (Adjectives / Feelings)

Depending on where the slider is placed, Apple Health suggests relevant descriptive words from its built-in dictionary (HKStateOfMind.Label):

• Positive / Pleasant End:
  • Amazed, Amused, Brave, Calm, Confident, Content, Excited, Grateful, Happy, Hopeful, Joyful, Passionate, Peaceful, Proud, Relieved, Satisfied.
• Negative / Unpleasant End:
  • Angry, Annoyed, Anxious, Ashamed, Disappointed, Discouraged, Disgusted, Drained, Embarrassed, Frustrated, Guilty, Hopeless, Irritated, Jealous, Lonely, Overwhelmed, Sad, Scared, Stressed, Worried.
• Neutral / Intermediate:
  • Indifferent, Surprised.

3. Impact Associations (What’s having the biggest impact)

After choosing descriptive feeling words, you can tag contextual life areas (HKStateOfMind.Association):

• Community
• Current Events
• Dating
• Education
• Family
• Fitness
• Friends
• Health
• Hobbies
• Identity
• Money
• Partner
• Self-Care
• Tasks
• Travel
• Weather
• Work

(Apple Health also includes an open-ended Additional Context field on this screen to record freeform text notes.)