About a month ago, as I was cleaning out a drawer in my bedroom, I rediscovered several old non-functional quartz watches collecting dust that have been patiently waiting to be rediscovered since they were quickly forgotten after I purchased an Apple Watch several years ago. It was a graveyard of jumbled bands and dials that seemed to be longing to be revived from the dead. Despite wearing my Apple Watch daily, I still never really enjoyed having it or feeling that it served its purpose for me. It seemed that every time I would look down at it to check the time, it would be blank and I’d have to move it around or push a button on it for the screen to light up to provide me with some very basic information… “What time is it, dammit?!?!?”
When it wasn’t telling me the time it was just another boring black nondescript glass-covered square strapped to my wrist not unlike what I see on seemingly everyone else’s wrists when I’m out and about. I even wore it so I could track all my walking/sitting/breathing/sleeping and heart rate, but I honestly never really did anything with the information it recorded. Recently, I just felt that I needed a little more style and simplicity strapped to my wrist. It is clearly “time” I step up my game and accessorize.
With my newly rediscovered dead quartz watches in front of me, I started to reminisce about a time in high school when I owned a Seiko automatic mechanical watch and just how good it felt on my naked wrist, keeping time for me with no winding necessary as it constantly charged itself utilizing the kinetic energy of daily movement throughout the day. It was at that moment I decided it was time to take action (no pun intended). I have since purchased a watch repair kit, new batteries and revived all my old watches back to their useful state, after several hours of cussing during the process as itty bitty parts would occasionally fall to the kitchen floor requiring intense flashlight beams and many occurrences of crawling on hands and knees in search of the vital pieces needed to complete the reassembly.
My Apple Watch has been charged, powered off, and is now sitting patiently on my desk to be worn, but will probably be doing so for a very long time. I have also started to rediscover mechanical watches, watching countless YouTube and web reviews of all kinds of watches and as well as the new advances in their movements since I had my original Seiko back when I was in high school. I have caught the bug! This may be a problem!
As I write this, I have purchased three new mechanical watches! All of them Seikos and relatively inexpensive (just in case Natalie actually reads this), but they are beautiful to me!
Mechanical watches are beautiful and I consider some of them to be works of art. One reason I love mechanical wristwatches is because of their history and heritage. First and foremost, the heritage and history of watchmaking are many centuries old, and while the technique and the art of watchmaking have been improved and refined, it’s still the traditional principles that apply today.
In this digital age, having something that is truly made by hand can be really refreshing. And in many ways, it’s just something special to wear a mechanical wristwatch when you understand just the long and rich history and heritage that mechanical wristwatches have. There are not many substitutes in this day and age to what a mechanical wristwatch and the craftsmanship it has been made with, can offer.
Hopefully, in the very near future, I will be that mysterious and stylish 50-year-old (give or take a few years) guy wearing a linen suit standing in the corner of some dive bar in Sheboygan when someone will come up to me and say, “Hey! Nice watch!” I’m still waiting for that to happen by the way……. Perhaps I need to buy more watches!
