I sometimes worry that I’m no longer living. I’m alive, yes, but in a zombie-state wherein I walk around, breathing, eating but not really living. I want to be in the moment. But that is so much harder than it purports to be. I walk around, in the middle of the day, going through moments of life without actually experiencing any of it. I don’t savor the beats of the seconds of the minutes of the hours of the day. I look at the time and, ironically, all I see is a watch.
In the past I had aspirations of being a novelist. I put in the work, I wrote, everyday, for years until I have the prerequisite drawer full of unpublished novels, novelettes, short stories, plot outlines, half-stories, beginning-of-stories. I never got published except for the occasional article here or there in broadsheets. For the young people reading this, broadsheets are those large pieces of paper you see old people read to get their news.
I thought I’ve given up on that dream years ago. The last “novel” I finished writing to hide inside that metaphorical disheveled drawer was in 2015. I was fine for a while. But last year, the itch came back. A scratching and wriggling irritant in my head. This parasitic idea percolating is watch-related. Of course it is.
What if I do a biography of a watch collector? Would that be something?
I tried for a day or two. Writing meandering stream-of-consciousness scribblings here and there. But even I couldn’t stand the pretentious navel-gazing. Like, here, I’ll give you a taste because you didn’t ask:
“This one she asked all the time: “Why won’t you let me up the attic to clean? What are you hiding up there?” She made it seem so mysterious and horrific my one rule of her never going up the attic. I am not Bluebeard. I do not have mummified bodies of past wives up there. Had she been more observant, she would’ve ascertained the answer all on her own. She would only have needed to look at my wrist.
I am in the attic now, all cobwebs and dust so thick that they dance in the small ray of light that goes through the smoked window at the far end of the room. There is a wide table just in front of the hatch that leads back down to the rest of the world. On that table are five custom-made large watch boxes made from mahogany and plexiglass with six-by-six slots, all full of watches I have collected over the years. I have 180 watches in total. The attic might be dirty but the watch boxes are wiped clean every day by me. I take care of the watches as a collector is wont to do. In the attic there is also a singular chair, which is where I am sitting now, starting at the watches with intent. “
I wrote this and I couldn’t stand it, what more others? But that was the space I found myself waddling through last year. A storyteller looking for a story, a collector looking for a collection.
I am ensconced in a blanket of ennui, which I keep trying to shake off. The escape from the mundane is not my issue. I like the mundane and the tedium. We can’t all be adventurers. I’ve travelled. It’s highly overrated. But I had thought contentment was not impossible. I had thought a simple, no-frills, ribeye-cooking, Coca-cola in the fridge having life was all I desired. Yet, here we are, I have what I want and I don’t want it.
Listless I trudge through pathless woods I made up in my head. I mistake the watch I have on my wrist for a compass. It only points to the time when what I need is to find true north. What am I going to do with my life? I’ve been asking this since I was a teenager. Now, forty-eight and I still have no answer. I’m so tired I can barely sit up.
Collecting watches was a reprieve from the rudderless life. At least for a while. I had purpose again. I felt excitement. But now…
Recently I wrote about having a one-watch colle… well, let’s not call it a collection since that will distract from the message. Let’s not call it anything then. Revision: I wrote about having one watch. Just one watch. I was surprised by how just declaring that intention to the world made me smile a little bit. It’s not that I no longer find watches fascinating, I still do. But I’m discovering that collecting is a shackle that’s not as thrilling as I once found it to be.
I saw a comment in another forum about having one watch that made me think–something about comparing one watch to only owning one pair of shoes, perhaps even only owning one shirt, one pair of trousers, perhaps one jacket, etc. I had to think about that for a second because on the surface it seemed like a reasonable excuse to own more than one watch. Except, when I dug deeper I found this reasoning to be flawed. Clothes have a function. Watches don’t. In the winter, one needs thick, warm coverings. In the summer, one needs the opposite. The type of clothes one wear will impact one’s life. In many instances, you need the right clothes to keep you from dying even. As the people living in a cold country. Clothes make a person comfortable and functional. You can’t run properly wearing leather shoes. In other words, clothes are necessary. Same goes with shoes:
All God’s children need traveling shoes…
Not so with watches. You don’t need a specific watch to do any specific activity. If your dress watch is too precious for gardening, take it off and do your gardening without a watch. If your Casio is too casual for formal wear, take it off and go to your event without a watch. No one needs a watch. A watch is a privilege, you can’t tell me otherwise.
Beyond the pro-one watch discourse, I find myself unable to care about watch formality, wearing all my dressiest watches casually. I take them off if I do end up doing an activity that is dangerous for dress watches. Finally, can we truly prognosticate what’s around the corner? Coming from a swanky dinner wearing a Cartier Tank, I suddenly find myself in the middle of a riot. Would I then have wished that I wore something that’s more rugged? But I’m wearing a suit and tie, do I have time to go home and change into my riot clothes first? But how was I supposed to know these things ahead of time? What if it rains? Answer: You deal with it. Your watch, whatever its water resist rating might be, can handle it. If I’m honest, I’m more worried about my good leather strap getting ruined by the rain than water getting into the watch. In which case, I could just take it off and put it inside my pocket. Or tuck it under the cuff. Or I deal with ruined leather. It’s just a watch.
This is hyperbole. But until the spirit of Steve Jobs gets reincarnated into a watchmaker who designs a way to bring your entire collection with you inside a container the size of an iPod, you’re stuck with one watch while you’re going about your business anyway.
I feel like I should explain that last statement to our younger readers. The iPod was a device that could carry your entire MP3 collection. Before the iPod, we walked around with Discmans and Walkmans–Discmen? Walkmen?–that could only carry one album at a time. I don’t know about you but I carefully selected the album I wanted to listen to, on repeat, at the beginning of the day and be content with that one album. I would bring extra albums with me if I was carrying a backpack but I never liked doing that. I never wanted to carry things. Same with watches, really. You are stuck with the one watch you have on your wrist for a certain period of time. You can probably have a spare tucked away in your car or if you’re carrying a backpack you can bring a watch roll. But I don’t like doing that. I don’t want to be that person. The watch I put on in the morning is the watch I want to take off at night before I get ready for bed.
One watch. That’s it.
A mentor turned friend once asked me, what’s the next big dream? Given that I’m not good enough to be a proper writer, having nothing meaningful to write about anyway, what’s the next big dream? If I’m thinking about watch goals, I may not need to deal with that question too much. Having one watch won’t shake off the ennui, of course. There is no silver bullet to cure life’s meaninglessness. But it will take the edge off a bit, keep me from spirally down into anhedonia. It’s a small dream, not the next big one, but it’s all I have right now.
I will stop here. Part 2 next time, I promise, in which I talk about the actual strategy.
The Escapement Room 