I originally downloaded Instagram for the filters that would turn any picture that I took into one that resembled the washed-out Polaroids of my childhood. I never intended to give anyone an instant update into what brunch looked like or what trail I was hiking. Part of being “in the moment” is to be “in the moment”. Nothing kills spontaneity and fun quite like looking at your phone. I don’t take too many photos when traveling because I like the traveling part, not the taking photos part.
A young associate once told me that I was doing the “Insta” all wrong because I had posted a picture of what I did the day before. “That’s for Facebook” she helpfully added. Well great, losers like me are consigned to a social media platform that I only use to transmit pictures of my children to my mother. I was a late adopter to Facebook. It was nine years old before I created a profile. Well before Macedonian bot farms tried to convince me who to vote for in 2016 I had largely lost interest in the platform. I am just not “social” enough, I guess.
(Actual post from my Instagram circa 2017. Yes, with content like this you have to be related to me by blood to want to follow me.)
The long and short of it is that I have never posted a photo of a watch or a wrist shot on those two platforms. I don’t belong to any watch related groups and follow no more than perhaps two watch related profiles. But for all of that resistance to posting that watch content, I have posted nearly 600 wrist shots on a watch forum on consecutive days. I have a streak going, but not the longest streak. Before the latest streak I had posted nearly a year’s worth of photos before forgetting while on vacation one day, one day in the moment.
Cal Ripken once said, about a for more important and difficult streak, “The streak has become my identity; it’s who I’ve become.” Any conscious activity or habit acquires a certain weight over time, even silly little photos of watches. The ritual has become a burden. So, I will let it go.
But more than just being a minor drag on my psyche, I believe that it has changed my wearing habits. I prefer automatic watches. I never wear them two days in a row so that I may show something different to the forum. I have spent more for repair on my automatics. They are my most accurate and, with what I have paid to watchmakers, my most expensive watches. And because I want to keep an even rotation of all my pieces, they sit in the watch box waiting on their eventual turn. The daily display is keeping me from wearing my automatics for several days in a row.
The new daily watch is an outward display, a signal. I don’t have terribly expensive watches, but I do have a lot of them. There is wealth in quantity, or at least the perception of wealth. Vintage pieces are also rare just by being old. They carry a certain sense of class and pedigree. I have also used this flex with older cars. Sure, you may have air conditioning, gas mileage, and reliability, but my car has wings.
(Ok, it didn’t have wings, per se. And it wasn’t shiny like this one. It was all Bondo and primer and was missing some trim. But it was my first car and it was cool because it was old.)
I think that I shall wear the automatics on consecutive days, maybe even weeks. (Let’s be serious, I can’t go weeks, that’s crazy talk.) I will wear them in the privacy of my real life, the life that is mostly invisible to those on the internet. The life where I interact with human beings who mostly tolerate my eccentricities. Too much curation in life is artificial. I will signal and post fewer wrist shots (and I will use more filters). After all, it’s just watches.
The Escapement Room 