What's the meaning of it all?!

Reading these lines I think you are at the point where you should start watching jeff mcmahon on youtube 😂 welcome to the watchaddiction club bro 👊

Aaaaah, Jeff!! My old mentor in the game of doubt 🧙‍♂️

Watches or strippers and cocaine??? Hmmmmm, now you got me thinking!!🍻

Sounds like a typical day in a watch addicts life, including mine. Great photo BTW.

Interesting. Really. your point of the hobby not having deeper meaning, and being a useful past time.. I don’t collect watches for their deep meaning- I do because I love watches and every watch is a conversation with my late dad. I miss our conversations. 
I don’t look for a deep useful meaning in my hobby, I have it in abundance in my work, what I do in life. My hobby is a bit of a getaway from my profession, where I give, and give, and than give some more, with all the passion you can imagine.. so I give myself a pass when it comes to this hobby of ours.

Who says you can't do it all? I don't think you're allowed to be a cokefuled sexaddict without having a douchey watcht 🤔

For me, the watch hobby is a pressure release valve. Or at least it was in the beginning. Now it's more of a voyage of discovery as the world slowly cracks apart. I think watches, right now, are, for me, an allegory of what we find and leave in life, but on a different scale, of course.

I recently found myself with the opportunity to have the watch of my dreams and I took it. It does give me some new worries and now I know I didn't really need it. But I am glad to have it.

It's part of the journey. I don't give it a second thought. Watches continue to liberate and excite me. But the best part is sharing this journey with so many other fans.

Well it seems like you have reached a junction in your watch collecting journey. 

What do I want from this crazy hobby? 

Am I getting anything from this crazy hobby? 

What is the point of it?

Will I be happy when I get that grail watch?

These and many other question could be asked of life itself, what is the point of it all but to only propagate and pass on your seed and to collect shinny things along the way like a crow. 🤣

Don't think too deeply my friend, if you enjoy watches that's about the most simplistic answer there is, enjoyment. Life is too short to spend it pondering what it's all about, just enjoy the here and now 👍

Great choice as your grail watch though, that's on my radar as my retirement watch.

I quess the philosophical conclusion is that nothing has meaning beyond what you give it or find in it. So I guess I should find satisfaction in the fact that I got something that conjures up enthusiasm in me? The whole post is half way a skit, but not 🤣 Why so serious?

Thanks ☺️

I guess anything will come with some stress (if you are that kind of person) and escalate with your invenvestment ☺️ 

Maybe I just have transferred my existential ponderings to watches. It less stressful in that case 🤔 The stakes are not as high. 

I feel that if I landed the Aqua Terra or another grail the journey would end. Why would I sit here en write posts and watch youtube reviews? And that's half the fun? 

Yes, that can be the case of course, but contrary to what I thought it would happen, the stress was not proportional in my case. I kind of helped me to relativice the value of watches themselves. Hard to explain.

Grail watches are a myth as I have several grail Rolex models but the initial buzz of ownership fades and they become just another watch in the collection. Recently I’m getting more enjoyment for my comparatively cheaper Sinn watches

I think im in trouble, I just figured out how many watch I can get for $5000 v 1. Not sure I noticed any other words in the post. Shit....I need a meeting!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I didn't wait that long to wear it again. But I think it is perfectly normal, that your "primary" watch changes from time to time, or that your preferences shift. But I do find myself going back to the watches I already have. (In fact I catch myself quite often wanting to buy something that is something very similar to what I own.) There is something like a second or  third honeymoon...

Thanks! You bet there will be an update 😁 Now, I'm gonna be a good boy and change to my G-Shock before hitting the gym.

I don't think of hobbies as passions, but rather things that inspire joy, appreciation, or satisfaction. I find that I have a few main hobbies that I flow in and out of over time. I expect my watch hobby to fade a bit at some point, until eventually, something pulls me back in again. When a hobby no longer inspires joy, it's time for me to take a step back for a bit, and wait for the joy to find me again.

So.. cocaine and whatnots over material things? 👍

I'll try to keep this oblique to keep a pg rating...  

Say there was a guy (not me) with a small but somewhat gnarly burn scar.  When asked he describes a scenario from a trip to Mardi Gras in his late teens.  He meets someone in the service industry who offers a discount if he pays them instead of their management.  Management finds out and goes after both of them with a hot cocaine pipe before any money changes hands.

Everyone's ok, and that story still brings tears of laughter to the eyes of everyone involved in that trip 25 years later.  

Sure there was money spent on flights, and a hotel, and drinks, but those would have been spent anyway, and the $50 that would have changed hands probably wouldn't have bought a thing that still sparked so much laughter all those years later.

Point taken; objects designed to facilitate experiences can't be wholly divorced from the experiences themselves.

But I don't want to loose interest 😜

So.. cocaine (pipe) and what not? 😂

I wish I can say “Yes! This is my grail watch I’m not getting anymore!!“ but that’s lol e me saying I don’t need oxygen to breathe!! 😁… I know it’s unhealthy 🤦‍♂️

Over many years and burning down and rebuilding my collection many times, a more clear agenda has developed, along with a lot more patience.  I've broken up a collection that was more "spree orientated" into smaller groups of watches, with a more targeted agenda.  This has served me fairly well in the later stages of collecting and has helped keep things fairly under control.  You need to just work through it your way, every collector faces similar challenges but develops their own solutions.  It's fun to share but ultimately, its personal.  The deeper meaning for you will eventually come to the fore.

I'm fascinated with anything mechanical so I collect other mechanical items, not just watches.  Feel lucky if it is just watches for you at this point.

Noted. I like things mininal. So establishing separate collections might not be my solution. Maybe it like with women for me. I'm looking for some wifematerial 🙃 Doesn't have to be perfect, just someone to love and trust. And that I want to spend my life with 🤣

Yes! It's proven i several studies that it's unhealthy to stop breathing (especially oxygen).. I'll advise against it 🤣

For me, watch collecting is my adult version of play. Play is necesssry to maintain our mental health and sanity, and it’s not just for kids. But it does take different forms as we get older.  As we become “grown-ups” we’re programmed by society to think of adult play as time wasted or inefficiency, which brings on feelings of guilt you mentioned.  But that’s a bullshit lie we’ve been force-fed by other play-deprived adults. 
 

Once you understand this, the guilt fades away (as long as the majority of your time isn’t focused on play above all other things) and the joy returns.  Watch collecting is my escape where time (quite ironically) passes without me being aware of the amount of time I’ve spent going down a rabbit hole the different properties of different Spron alloys. 
 

I’m pretty content with my collection and now my focus is starting to shift to playing with cheaper watches to better learn how they work and get more of a hands-on experience with these amazing tiny machines.  Soon I’m sure I’ll be taking them apart and putting them back together for fun. 
 

Keep having fun cause 

Good perspective!! Thanks 🙂

The answer is 42.