IT’S okay to be bored

It’s Okay To Be Bored

One of the strangest things about watch collecting is that, unlike most hobbies, we often stop treating it like a hobby.

It becomes a home.

We move in. Decorate the walls. Make it our personal prison. Convince ourselves the couch is different because we moved it three feet to the left. (I’m talking to you, Rolex. A new dial color isn’t exciting.) Then we wonder why nothing feels new anymore.

For a hobby that revolves around tiny machines whose function was essentially solved by the invention of quartz, we sure know how to make things complicated. And arrogant.

A normal person buys a watch. A watch collector spends four hours researching a watch, watches six YouTube videos about the watch, reads seventeen forum posts about the watch, purchases the watch, and then spends the next month wondering if he should have bought the slightly different version of the watch.

The truth is that many of us stop collecting watches and start collecting participation in the hobby itself.

The next release.

The next trade.

The next rumor.

And if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve probably experienced something that feels almost illegal to admit:

You got bored. The watches stopped exciting you. You stopped checking forums every morning. You skipped the latest release video. You started rolling your eyes at the next Rolex video. You wore the same watch for three weeks straight and realized the world continued spinning. Then comes the weird feeling that you’re somehow failing the hobby because you stepped away and found a little peace.

But watch collecting isn’t a marriage.

You don’t owe it your constant attention.

You don’t need to consume watch content every day.

You don’t need to have a take on every new release.

And contrary to what Instagram might suggest, you are allowed to enjoy a watch without worrying about the next one. We buy these things to make memories, but then abandon them when we get bored. Insert ironic Emperor Palpatine meme.

Sometimes the healthiest thing a collector can do is disappear for a while.

Travel somewhere.

Read a book.

Lift something heavy.

Start a business.

Call your parents.

Touch grass.

Because the irony is that the moment you stop forcing yourself to engage with watches, they usually become interesting again.

Distance creates perspective.

Like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The prisoners spend their lives staring at shadows on a wall, believing that’s reality. Only when one leaves the cave does he understand how much larger the world actually is.

Sometimes watch collectors build their own cave. Forums, Instagram, YouTube, Discord, Reddit.

I’ll tell you this for free…Gerald Genta wasn’t on r/watches.

I’ve lived in that cave. Hell, I signed a lease there. But eventually, you come up for air. And when you do, you remember something important:

The watch was never supposed to be the main character.

You are.

The promotion you celebrated with it is.

The relationship it reminds you of is.

The years of your life attached to it are.

The stories don’t happen while refreshing forums.

They happen while you’re busy doing something worth remembering. So if you’re bored with watches right now, good.

Seriously.

Maybe that’s not a problem to solve. Maybe that’s your cue to go live a little. The watches will still be here when you get back.

And let’s be honest…you’ll still check every wrist that walks past you.

Some habits die harder than others.