Zeno's Paradox, the Long Journey and a different sort of SOTC

Let me explain.

For those of you who didn't waste a university class on introductory philosophy, let me summarize the most famous of Zeno of Elea's philosophical paradoxes, the dichotomy of the race course.

Suppose Will Smith is walking 100 feet from his seat to the Oscars stage to slap Chris Rock for making a bad joke about his wife.  But before he gets there, he has to walk half way.  And before he gets half way, he needs to walk a quarter of the way.  And before a quarter, an eighth and so on.  And because getting to Chris Rock requires an infinite amount of steps (1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, etc.....), Will Smith can neither begin nor end his journey to deliver Chris Rock his slap.

Of course, Will Smith did wallop Chris Rock on national television and anyone who knows anything understands the incremental fractionalization of distances makes no sense in reality.  You travel to your destination and then you eventually get there.

But my guess is that Zeno never met a watch collector, because every collector knows the actual truth of the matter, that you can be a couple of watches away from completing your collection and then, after purchasing those very watches, still be a couple watches away from completing your collection.  

I've been halfway done with my collection about fourteen different times in my life and I feel just about as close to the end of the journey as I did when I began.

The product is below.  Be forewarned, this is no more than an exercise in self indulgent navel gazing (@Fracas, you ain't the only one here sister).  You all have my deepest apologies.

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Cartier Roadster (purchased in 2012)

I've waxed poetically about this watch in the past and I don't think it's necessary to rehash all of the things I've said about it.

But if there was ever a more elegant argument that watches are more than a spec sheet, I do not know that I've heard it.  

The Roadster is big and brash and loud, characteristics I rarely choose from my watches.  The movement is throughly okayish and it is too big even for my pretty big wrists.  Tim Mosso is lying when he says it can fit your 16cm wrist.  It's so heavy that wearing every day is actually difficult.

And yet, it is the last watch I'd ever get rid of.  It's been around the world with me.  I married the love of my life in this watch and it was a witness to the birth of my two girls.  It reminds me of my mother, especially her deep love of Cartier.  I even have a very-serious-and-not-at-all-amusing online beef with @Aurelian  because of this watch.

It is, as much as any watch can be, interwoven into my personal history.

Rolex Oysterquartz Day Date (given to me in 2021 but probably purchased in 1989)

My father's watch (he's still kicking), given to me on my 36th birthday.  I still remember the day he brought this watch home.  He couldn't stop staring at it for the entire evening.

I recall the era when this watch was bought and worn regularly, an era when my father, brash and filled with fiery purpose, left his big city medical school to become a rural doctor for a then tiny horse ranching community 60 miles east.

I remember moving and my mother being shocked that the nearest pizza place was half an hour a way.  We weren't connected to the municipal water system back then and so had to do with hard well water, mudslides during the wet season and fire during the dry.  

But it is in adversity we find our purpose.  My father found his as a doctor, then a leader of doctors, then a leader of hospitals and systems.  I spent my summers driving a tractor to till the ground, not to feed horses but to clear firebreaks around our home during the dry summers. Water, then as it is now, was precious and I learned to drive a tanker truck to fill up our water tanks by 17. I learned that I'm not much of a country boy but my hands still remember how to build retaining walls and pitchfork hay.

My father isn't much of a watch wearer anymore and wears a 36mm gold plated Tourneau on the rare occasions when he does.  The tiny community became a city in its own right and many more little cities sprung up beside it.

I rarely wear this watch because I find it too flashy, too filled with personality.  I find that it is on the edge of too small on my wrist and I feel I look a bit too much like a Triad member with it on.  It is very much so a watch of an era.

But even 30 plus years later, the quartz hand is perfectly aligned and, with the exception of a few dents and scratches, the watch is as perfect as the day it came out of the factory.

And every so often, I like to put it on to feel what my father felt when he was my age and the fire burned in him as bright as the sun.

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I've long put off a State of the Collection post for various reasons.

Part of it is a bit of weird modesty.  I have old fashioned sentiments about flaunting the things that I have.  I've been deeply fortunate in my life, there's no question, and I would not want anyone to feel weird about their own collections because they didn't spend an arbitrary amount of money in it.  And yes I know I post pictures of my watches all the time.  I contain multitudes.

Part of it is that I feel I am a thoroughly mediocre photographer.  I look at @Chunghauphoto , @hakki501 , @nytime , @Deeperblue , and countless others and I know immediately that I have neither the patience nor the eye to produce beautiful photographs.

But most importantly, I feel a little emotionally detached from these objects that I spend so much time studying and thinking about.  I genuinely believe that I could walk away from most of these watches with little regret.  If the house were on fire, I'd grab my kids and my wife, my wedding ring, and the kid's birth certificates.  Things can be replaced, people can't.

But I would be remiss in saying that these watches don't have stories associated with them.  In fact, the only reason I truly value any of them is that I can use watches to mark the highlights and lowlights of my life, to remind me of people I love, and the lessons I've learned.

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JLC Master Geographic (Purchased in 2019)

When I bought this watch, I felt like I was on top of the world.  I had (and have) a loving family and a fulfilling career.  Professionally, my life was nearly perfect.  I was making pretty serious money for the first time in my life, and the underlying performance of my business was excellent.  It felt like the best of all possible worlds.

And so, as a celebration of my success, I went out and bought this somewhat uncommon reference of the JLC Master Geographic.  I loved the inky black dial, the unusual complication, and the beautiful and well crafted bracelet. I thought then (as I do know), it was a watch for the person I was hoping to become.

As things are wont to do when I get overly confident about my prospects, everything went to pot about a month after paying off the credit card bill, when my biggest investor (accounting for over 60% of our revenues) left without explanation.  We later learned they went bust.

For those of you who have faced this scenario, you know that the naysayers come out in droves when this occurs.  My most trusted advisors told me to quit, to take my earnings and leave others to fend for themselves.  I'll admit that this was probably the most rational course of action but I was then, as I am now, too stubborn to call it quits.

It's hard to give up on something you've built with your hands, but if we were to survive, we would need to burn the boats and prepare ourselves for a dark future.  My business partner and I took our salaries to zero (technically negative because we both put money back into the business), slashed our real estate footprint, and drove out every unnecessary cost in the system while also overhauling our marketing.  We survived, but barely, pulling out of the nose dive just as we began to count the leaves on the trees on the ground hurtling towards us.

My JLC reminds me of my hubris (in believing in endless blue skies) but also our collective resilience and the joys of working with people who believe in you and what you're trying to do even through hardship.

I've made more memories since. It was my steady companion during the inaugural WatchCrunch One Watch Challenge( #1wc).  I hope when I am long gone from this site, everyone remembers me as the moron who decided to bring a no water resistance world timer to a summer watch fast.

When I look at this watch I am reminded of a passage from a favorite childhood book, Hawaii by James Michener, where a matriarch of a prominent Hawaiian Chinese family looks down at the smoldering ruins of Honolulu after the Great Chinatown Fire of 1900 destroys everything they own and urges her family to not give into tragedy but instead to find strength in their stomachs to rebuild.

There was a long silence as the brothers looked down at the scarred city, visible now and then through the low clouds of smoke that hung in the valleys.  On the ocean beyond, the long surf came rolling in, impartially as it had for millions of years, and the Kee boys somehow understood what their mother was urging them to do.  From despair hope rises; from defeat victory.  There are only three bad years, followed by six wonderfully rich ones.  The city is burned but it must be rebuilt.  The family is nearly destroyed, but if there is one man left alive, or one woman, it must go on.  Night falls with the smell of destruction, but day rises with the smell of wet mortar...and building resumes.

I toyed with years with the idea that  I would sell this watch, given the baggage associated with it.  But we don't get to choose our memories.  Positive or negative, they are ours.  And perhaps that is why I keep it around.

Grand Seiko SBGA429 (purchased in late 2020)

I have often wondered why my life seems to be as though I am lurching from one crisis to another.  I am sure my life is pretty darned good but perhaps the negatives are the only things that stick out as clear memories.  There's a cheerful commentary on my personality.  Anyway from a business crisis to Covid!  

I mentioned my father was a doctor.  He's a lung specialist by trade and, at the age of 67, put off retirement to work 15 hours days in the ICU for 9 months straight to buy enough time for the first rounds of mRNA vaccines to get into arms.  I am quite certain that in those early days when there were no treatments a Covid infection would have killed him.  And yet he went, a willing warrior and veteran of another pandemic (Avian Flu in the early 2000s) to lend his leadership and expertise.

I have always known that Dad was brave, but this was the first time I had known him to be heroic.  For all the doctors, nurses, EMTs, MA, and other medical types here, you have no idea how much you are appreciated each and every single day.

There were other difficulties too.  I had a two year old daughter (with another on the way) and we lost childcare early in the pandemic, devastating for two working parents.  I know the scale of how difficult those first days were, because of just how much I have locked out the emotions of those fraught and frantic first weeks.

Sometimes survival is enough to celebrate and we managed through COVID with our family, health and livelihoods intact. Stir crazy but alive and healthy.

I'd originally bought an Aqua Terra at first but couldn't quite get over the bracelet and so traded it in to Watchbox, where the friendly salesperson directed me towards a used SBGA429.  I was immediately taken.

The Soko Shadow reminds me of my last international trip before Covid shut down the world, an enchanting two weeks in Japan.  I have talked fondly with @Fieldwalker about my experience at the Arashiyama bamboo grove before and the dial truly is evocative of those peaceful groves (with fewer tourists to boot).

More broadly, the Soko reminds me to be grateful for the subtle joys of normal life: of being able to go out to eat in a restaurant, of being able to get on an airplane and see the world, of bonding with other enthusiasts (not the least @Ichibunz and @HotWatchChick69) , and of being able to hug my friends and my family.

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My journey to collecting has been a long one.  It started in earnest after I bought my first luxury watch, the aforementioned Cartier, and it's largely been absurdity since.

There was a point in my watch collecting career that I bought virtually every watch I could lay my hands on: Tudors, Rolexes, and so so many Seikos (and many more besides).  I think my collection topped out at 30 plus watches....not as many as some here but far too many for me.

I've never been foolish enough to take on debt to buy but I have certainly been in a place where I bought a watch because I was bored or felt an emotional emptiness somewhere.

For the last 5-6 years, I've been in a slow process of divesting watches that I did not feel I had an emotional connection with.  And as it happens, that was virtually every watch I owned.  And so bit by bit, the collection was dismantled, sold or given away or auctioned off for charity here.

I think it could have been rightly considered an addiction then and I'd like to think that when I see a problem, I do my best fix the problem.  I believe deeply in the power of incentives and so instituted what will now be referred to as @Edge168n's rules for healthy collecting.

1. No debt

2. Whatever I spend on watches in a given year is 5x matched to charity in the following tax year

3. Ten slots, ten watches.  One in and one out after that.

What better way to harness my passion for these simple mechanical objects for the greater good?

And so I find myself with just five watches in my collection today (and two more rattling around that I am still bonding with).  It seems to be working ok.

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Rolex Daytona Purchased in 2021

In the JLC section, I remarked about the near death experience my business faced in 2019.  2020 was a year of recovery for us and 2021 was a year of plenty.

We pivoted, we found cash where needed it and added long term partners to our capital base.  I am quietly proudest of the fact that we kept our entire team, paid full salaries, and ended 2021 with significant bonuses to team members.  It was, by any measure, a nearly complete recovery.

I admit, I didn't really think about buying a watch to celebrate this time around.  It more than enough to simply be out of the danger zone.

But as though summoned by the Bat-signal, my AD called with an offer I couldn't refuse.  I'm not much of a hype watch guy, but the Daytona is my jam.  It's perfectly sized for my wrist, packed with an exceptional and high quality movement.  But I'm also not much for paying significantly over retail for a watch, so I contentedly bided my time on the waitlist, never really expecting a call.

But my AD called one October afternoon, breathlessly saying that my Daytona was in.  Fantastic!  What do you mean it's two tone?  Oh fine, I'll go take a look.

It wasn't a ceramic Daytona but it possessed all of its sportier cousin's good looks and excellent fit and finish.  And if my stories have told you anything, inauspicious starts aren't the end of me falling for a watch.  

I wore this watch when I closed my last major deal and when I found out that I was about to have a third daughter.  I wore it when I found out my father's cancer was in remission and when a nonprofit I am associated with opened a new clinic to provide healthcare to underserved patient populations.  I wore this watch when I started writing Watches in the Wild.

 I am pleased with the memories made already and, in time, I am sure there will be many more  stories to tell. 

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Am I done with buying watches?  Hardly.  I still buy watches, of all price ranges, and buy them joyfully.  But the arc of my collecting has moved from more impulsive to more contemplative, from attempts at rationality to attempts to bond emotionally.  

So if I'm not done, what's next?  I have no idea.  If it isn't clear, I have literally no idea what I'm doing.  And even if a watch is bought, odds are it won't be kept if there's no emotional resonance with it.  

Most of all, I am uniquely aware that I  (and most humans) am a poor judge of my own future preferences.  There are watches that I have loved that I simply lost interest in when I finally pulled the trigger.  There are watches that I had no interest in that I had to get the moment I saw them.

And that's okay.  Part of the joy of collecting is buying things and mulling them over, making mistakes, and ultimately figuring out the watches you love versus the watches you just end up buying.  

The most important thing....just begin, even if there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

Zeno be damned.