I’ve started to wear two watches: a mechanical one, and an Apple Watch.
For anybody who knows me, the Apple Watch is obvious: I’m a huge Apple fan and the Watch has made a measurable difference in my life: this watch-face above is what I use most of the time, and it helps me track my activity, sleep and water intake. It also has my calendar, and a shortcut that lets me start an exercise. In short: it’s the utility watch. A beautiful utility watch.
The other one is probably the cheapest good-looking mechanical watch I could find: a Fossil. Watch aficionados will probably cringe at the brand, but I’m still very early into mechanical watches, and this one looked sweet at that price point. The mechanical watch is pure indulgence, and that’s because just like my Leica and my record player, it’s the love of the device, its history, how it feels, and the intangible that attracts me here. It’s delightful to think about a purely mechanical contraption, entirely without batteries, on my wrist. Feels like magic.
A few of my friends have already said I’m a bit crazy for wearing not one, but two anachronistic devices for telling the time, when most of them make do with just their phone. I thought a bit about the why of dual wristing, and I felt a couple of things:
Our future self does not have to let go of our past. There is beauty, delight and wonder to be found in things that are outdated. Especially if, for their time and technology, they are well designed. I’ve always had this dual nature in me: I love the newest gadgets, but I seek the old and mellow. I’ve tried at times to analyze why is it that the Leica M (with its really old, inefficient manual rangefinder focus) is still my ideal camera. Part of it is that in search of efficiency, a lot of new technology has forgotten that we buy gadgets also for the experience. What does it feel when you sit in a chair? Or you see a delightful interaction on screen?
But frankly: a larger part is just self-serving idiosyncrasy.
This is just the way I am. Time to embrace it.
