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Are Watches a Waste of Time?

I asked this question on the forum the other day, it did as I expected got a pretty good response.  The title would get peoples’ attention and draw them in thinking that I had fully lost my mind.

‘Could it be true, does Smithy really think that watches are a waste of time?’

That question I’m sure was running through people’s minds as they opened the thread.  The truth be known the thought came to me as I was surfing the web late one night looking at some obscure brand of watches and their movements and thinking to myself that is really cool.  To a point it was really cool!  When I sat back and realised that I had for the last three hours been looking and reading about only one thing, watches, Swiss mechanical watches to be precise.

Was this a waste of time?

Had I really benefited from this last three hours?

Am I any wiser from my web surfing and watch gazing session?

I recently travelled through Europe, the history, architecture, different cultures there was so much there for me to see.  But what regularly stopped me in my path, watch stores.  It didn’t matter whether I was walking do a high street in England or the Amalfi coast in Italy or the world’s largest shopping mall in Dubai.  Any time I saw a watch store I had to stop and look through the window; firstly for an Oris watch then for anything cool that I may have only ever seen a picture.  I was more worried about these watches than I was of seeing the great sights of these cities.

I seem to waste a lot of time looking at these watches and not looking at the great sights of the world.  I did do a search on line to see if there was a specific term for this obsession, perhaps I could take a prescription drug to cure me of this affliction?  But no, no drug to take, no term to define, nothing.

Maybe I have been over reacting, perhaps I wasn’t obsessed?

I do recall when I returned from my trip the excitement of telling Warren about the Oris Mark Webber LE I discovered in Dublin or the Der Meistertaucher I saw on a guys wrist in Positano.   Or each morning in the office the discussions of the new models and web sites we had discovered the night before.  These isn’t time wasting this is part of my life, these watches are add to my days rather than taking from me.

I think I am cured.

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