Listen, Watch Obsessive, No Matter What You Get, You're Gonna Get Bored

 

Looking for a great chimera watch, a Watch Uber Alles, to cork your desire for new watches? Not happening. 

In any hobby, you're going to get bored with your old stock and want new stuff. That's the nature of the game. So don't expect this or that watch to cork your desire and slow down your ever-growing collection.

Having said that, I wouldn't mind acquiring this Seiko Velatura SRQ001 auto. 

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Comments

[jonnybardo]

I smoked cigarettes for about ten years (plus a few lingering years of occasional relapses) and I figured that the appeal of that sort of addiction is that it gives you a controlled self-gratification mechanism: You have rising desire (for a cigarette) which becomes quite intense, and then you can fulfill it and you feel immense pleasure and satisfication...until it grows again, but then you can satisfy it again.

Watch addiction is the same, but the problem is the cost. Now I can imagine an income twice what it is now and being able to buy more expensive watches, but then it would equalize and I'd simply be dealing with a different sphere of watches. So yeah, it doesn't matter how much you make - there's always going to be more.

(Actually, the latest studies show that middle income people tend to be happier than those of extreme wealth or poverty).

So as I said in one of my too-long responses last night, I see three options: 1) Either we over-indulge and eventually get ourselves into trouble (debt); 2) We avoid the cycle altogether and become hermits; or 3) We learn to moderate.

#3 is the ideal, in my opinion, but it requires a psychological shift - "killing the chimera," if you will. Learning to appreciate what we have, seeing it with new eyes, etc. Practically speaking this means buying a moderate amount of watches. I don't think there is an absolute rule at work, but one a month seems healthy, at least for me.

The more you buy, the more you want. That's what our society runs on, which is pathological, in my opinion. A more sustainable, balanced future is not one in which we continue to over-indulge, nor is it one where we need to completely abstain from material pleasures, but finding that nebulous middle way. It seems like walking on a razor's edge but the more you do it, the easier it is. It is sort of like doing a yogic headstand - at first it seems impossible to balance between falling backward and forward, and then you find that magical place and you're floating.