Open Mike II: Perils of Blogging

So this is kind of funny. When I started writing the "Why A Watch" post the other day, I actually started out intending to write about the Sony A6600. I was going to confess that I really want a Sony A6600, but that the desire makes no sense because I have no more need for it than I have for a wristwatch. I was going to explain that I had kinda gotten interested in wristwatches in spite of myself, despite the fact that I had no need for one whatsoever and no intention whatsoever of buying one. I was going to say that the same thing was true of the A6600. So the part about the watches was just going to be "introductory matter" you might say. After that I was going to discuss why we get GAS in the absence of need.

So then I got into doing a little more research on wristwatches and before you know it...off to the races. Pretty soon I realized the stuff about the A6600 was superfluous, so I just chopped it out and concentrated on the parts about watches. Three posts later and here I am, $157 poorer and with a Seiko on my wrist for the first time in decades.

Such is the life o' Mike...(shaking head in wonderment...). I had fun though!

Mike

P.S. No link to the A6600 here. The reason is that the price has been ping-ponging between $1,200 and $1,400 lately and it's at $1,400 right now. Should you want one, wait.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Steve Deutsche: "How can I want one without your review!  8^)  "

Bernd Reinhardt: "Hahaha, let me share my watch lust origin story. About twenty years ago, my friend from Germany came to visit me in Los Angeles, and during a visit to Chinatown, he bought himself a fake Rolex. When he visited again a year later, we were sitting at the table and I was looking at his Rolex submariner. 'Oh, is this your Chinatown Rolex?' He had this little smirk on his face, and it dawned on me that this must be the real thing. 'Why would you spend that kind of money on some Grandpa-style watch?' I screamed. He laughed and said that after wearing the fake for several months, he discovered a tiny bit of rust on it. He became so frustrated and embarrassed that he drove down to Switzerland and bought the real thing that same day. I took a closer look at it and he pointed out how smooth the sweeping second hand glides over the watch face, and from that day on, I started dreaming of nice watches.

"There is very little that we actually need, but there is nothing wrong with getting something just because you really want it every now and again."

James: "Re ...'that the desire makes no sense because I have no more need for it than I have for a wristwatch'.... YOU LIKE NICE THINGS—WE ALL DO."

James Allen: "It was certainly entertaining to 'ride along' on your mental watch quest. I have been wearing one since I was a kid...which was about 5+ decades ago. So I feel the kinship. I work with a few younger guys now, and I'm the only one wearing a watch. It's my badge of life's experiences, all in one tiny, precise, piece of hardware. I even have to change the date when the month only has 30 days vs. 31, and yet it remains. It anchors me to the past as it tolls the passage of my life."

Comments

[Peter Croft]

I've always worn a watch, and I like them. I don't spend big, all my watches were less than $250. I've got about a dozen or more in my collection, going right back to the Waltham brand, made in USA, that my dad gave me when I passed my Junior school certificate at age 15 in 1962. I remember that we always needed to guard our watches then, eg going to the beach. Not these days.

The thing is, I love mechanical precision, and elegance of design. Watches and cameras are masterpieces of mechanical design and manufacture. I also like Scandinavian minimalism, hence I've got two or three watches by Skagen and Obaku.

I'm a sucker for analogue/digital since it seems a natural combination, and Pulsar makes the most elegant IMHO.

I want the watch I wear to project my good taste. I also much prefer to briefly glance at my wrist, rather than have to dig my phone out from my pocket.

[Aaron]

Such are the perils of the internet in general, I think. I've known for years that the cure for my own GAS would be simply to stop reading camera/gear blogs and websites. Pretty much any interchangeable lens camera from 2015 on (or, shoot, maybe even 2013 on) has everything I actually need to produce images that I want at the level of quality I want. But, alas, I keep reading them, which keeps making me think my gear is 'deficient' in some way--when, objectively for my purposes, it clearly is not.

By the way, although you do sometimes write about camera gear, I don't consider your blog a "camera/gear blog." So, I'd keep reading it even if I ever mustered the willpower to stop reading others.

[Bill Tyler]

Somehow, your journey reminds me of Jonathan Swift's "A Tale of a Tub" which contains "A Digression Concerning Critics," A Digression in the Modern Kind," "A Digression in Praise of Digressions," and several more digressions.

[Mark]

On the other hand, we're hitting the beginning of a chip shortage and digital cameras and their sensors might be at elevated prices for a while:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chip-shortages-are-starting-to-hit-consumers-higher-prices-are-likely-11624276801

[Stan B.]

I usually end up getting a cheap camera bag whenever I get the GAS bad- now I gotta goddang watch in my cart!

[Richard Chomko]

How was it when you got your last camera? Was that something you needed? I haven't bought a camera myself all year long, though I did buy two the year before, Fuji XT3 and X-H1. I keep hoping Fuji is going to figure out how to do better video autofocus so I don't have to switch to Sony. In watches I have a Seiko similar to yours. I try to avoid being around my phone too much for emf exposure reasons. Also on the advice of a natural healer I swapped the metal band on the watch with a leather one. Apparently leather doesn't so much impede the flow of life energies through the body.

[Khürt Williams]

LOL. I'm not interested in the A6600, but I do want to know which Seiko you bought. When Dad passed in 2019, in a fit of nostalgia, my younger brother bought each of his brothers a Seiko 5. It was the watch Dad wore when we were kids and that we were never allowed to touch.

It's the only watch I wear.