Hi, it’s me again, this time about the wrist watches. Let’s go!
Do you like watches? I do. I have a thing for the watches, even though I know nothing about them. I just appreciate the way they designed, and how all those tiny parts assemble a perfect mechanism for the sole purpose of showing the time. And there are different kinds of watches. Like mechanical watches, quartz watches, smart watches. You know, all kinds of them.
I have a small collection of timepieces. Not very rich or intricate, nothing to sing a song about. After all, my journey with watches ended approximately at the same time as I started earning enough to afford some nicer models.
For the majority of time, I wore quartz Casio watches because they were cheap, simple, they told time, and I had no regard for their safety. I also changed a battery in them only twice since the mechanism was so simple and energy-efficient that they could run 5 years on one battery without any problem. I also had (and actually still have) mechanical watches from Ingersoll, which are in fact limited edition just because they are made for the right hand. Which is very rare, since the majority of the timepieces obviously made with left hand in mind. This was my primary collection back in the day (not a collection at all, according to some more invested people), but I was a poor student who had other necessities, and watches were just an accessory I got used to having on my wrist. And yeah, I had this thing where I wore watches on my right hand even though I’m not lefty. Just a weird thing I got suddenly very used to and did for years. Also, confused people since they thought I was a lefty.
Later, my wife made me a present and bought me Luminox. Yes, the NAVY SEAL’s watch, with tritium, and other cool stuff that is apparently very important if you’re in fact NAVY SEAL. I was just fascinated by how light and comfortable they were for their size, since Luminox is a pretty large watch (I’m talking about the more modern model with bigger dial, rather than the retro one). So, I used them as my daily driver for a while, until one day I didn’t buy Apple Watch and since then forgot about everything I had in my collection.
You just can’t deny how actually useful and simple smart watches are. You get everything on your wrist, and can always be in the loop. Messages, calls, maps, payments, sports and calories. Everything is there, and with every next model you get more and more cool functions. And there are lots of them, too, like Garmin, Apple Watch, Samsung, Suunto, Xiaomi, no-name chinese knock-offs, and the majority of them cost a reasonable amount of money (if not dirt cheap) for what they do. I mean, the smart watches revolutionized the way we see watches now. They are more than just to show us the time, the date, and maybe the day of the week. They are part of our lifestyle.
When I got Apple Watch, I was pretty much sure I won’t go back to orthodox watches. I just saw no sense in that. Well, it was like that until my father died, and his small watch collection didn’t end up in my hands.
There’s apparently something running in the family, since we’re all in favor of small collections. Only his collection was a bit more expensive than mine. Obviously, there were no Rolex watches, or Omegas, or some other upper-shelf timepieces, but still there were a few good, solid watches like Zeppelin, Seiko, Certina, and some others I can’t remember. Majority of those watches were worn a few times, but the rest of their lifespan they spent in the boxes. Same as I, my father gave preference to Casio, and then Apple Watches.
Once I saw this collection, and also realized that I have no idea what to do with it since I was not a big watches fan anymore, I just hid it, and successfully forgot about it. I couldn’t sell it for obvious reasons, but at the same time had no use of it. Right until recently.
Recently, I got tired of Apple Watches. We were in the mountains, and Apple Watches died on me in less than a day. Even when I turned on eco mode from the start. Yes, they are far from the new, I have 5th gen while they are already past 9th and perhaps are going to release 10th by the end of this year, so you know, this is expectable.
But while the mediocre battery life irritated me, what started infuriating me is the sheer volume of the information coming from those watches. The amount of alerts, messages, and other crap became overwhelming. And yes, I know I can turn it off, but if I were to turn everything off, I would’ve ended up with a simple digital watch with terrible battery life.
Anyway, I started thinking of other options. Perhaps Garmin Instinct 2 Solar. It sounded like a sweet deal, you just have a solar panel on your watch, and you can make it work for as long as you need. At least that’s what I thought. Then I saw the price of the said timepieces, and decided it wasn’t worth it, too. After all, I don’t spend this much time under the direct sun, so I won’t be able to utilize all the benefit of solar panel, while it also felt like an Apple Watch with extra step (not bashing, Garmin, though, just stating the fact that in terms of connectivity and notification it is pretty much the same stuff).
It became worse once I found out that plane mode turned on my Apple Watch didn’t stop incoming notifications. And it became foolishly infuriating since I was working on my novel and kept receiving Instagram reels from friends. And they just can’t send one reel, they have to send me an entire Instagram (sometimes I go crazy and repay them with the tripled amount of spam) within a minute or two. It wasn’t very nice, in particular because I expected completely different behavior from the piece of smart electronics with plane mode on.
Being kind of irritated beyond the acceptable threshold, I started thinking of solutions. Much to my surprise, the main solution that actually made sense to me was the decision to chill from all the technology and take a step back. Like switching to a more traditional watch for a while.
After thinking long and hard (you can laugh, if you’re a fan of Family Guy’s Quagmire), I remembered that I had Seiko 5 Sports that looks just like Rolex Submariner (obviously not so slick, and cool, but also far from being as expensive). I tried it out and surprisingly I liked it. Obviously, it was heavy, and the stainless steel bracelet required some serious adjustments before it fitted me just right (thankfully, I have all the necessary instruments available, so this wasn’t hard at all), but after an hour or two it felt natural again.
To make things better, since I already got used to wearing Apple Watch on my left hand, transfer to traditional watches to my left hand was also straightforward. I just wore it, and it seemed okay.
The lack of any other function except showing time, date, and day of the week (even though I could leave without date and day of the week), felt like a sudden breeze. No more incoming messages, notifications, or other digital crap. To make things even better, since those are self-winding watches, I forgot the last time I had to juice them up. I mean, I just wear them, and they work. The only thing I have to do from time to time is to fix the date since those are far from being smart and you have to take care of the thing eventually (or maybe not, depends how obsessed you are with everything being perfect).
Anyway, I even tried to wear Apple Watches once again, but just another outburst of notifications during my work made me quickly reconsider, and by the end of the day I rocked again the old watches. The lack of all this attachment to being notified of every fart in the digital space feels like a dream come true. Even though I must confess that from time to time I still raise my hand just to see the temperature outside (it’s a useful thing on Apple Watches, but from what I’ve noticed it’s not very precise in Poland, though).
Besides, those Seikos are just brand new. My old man didn’t wear them at all (maybe once or twice), so I find it really necessary to use them. You see, I am my father’s son, and I have a very similar set of problems in my head when it comes to keeping things untouched for the future. What future? Who the fuck knows. The future. And as life has shown, the future is pretty unpredictable, and it is very easy to regret your decision in a long run (if you can still regret about something after the death, of course).
And even though I’ve changed this mindset to a point where my new motto been, just use it, still it took me a while to change the way I looked at the things. Now, when I finally made some serious progress, I’m just using things I own, and see no reason to reach for the wallet to buy something new if I didn’t kill the previous one. That’s the way to fight inner consumerism, save some extra-dough on buying shit you don’t need, and also avoid hoarding. I’m doing my best in that department.
Besides, mechanical watches are cool, in particular the model of Seiko I own (from what I found out, it is apparently designated for the internal Japanese market, and it is a very sturdy work horse that can take some serious abuse with no problems), and knowing that I have something that will work for a lifetime (hopefully), really sounds nice in the current age where everything should be outdated and swapped in a few year span.
I think this is it. I forgot what I wanted to tell, and I hope that what I said makes sense. But for now I’m done. Thank you for reading and see you tomorrow. Bye!