Watches are gone or going the way of the dodo right? I mean actual watches that just tell time not watches that try and be supercomputers.  Everyone tells the time on their devices now so you don’t get a watch to do just that.  Right?

I don’t wear a watch.  I haven’t worn a watch since I was a child, I think my last watch memory was seeing 1979 click over to 1980 on my casio digital watch at new year’s eve (yes even as a child I knew how to party).  I stopped wearing watches as a child because I kept losing them.  As I got older I didn’t want a watch because I felt that paying too much attention to time was unhealthy and stressful.  I think I have a good internal clock and I can always tell when a kitchen alarm i’ve set is about to go off about 5 seconds before it does :-).  On top of that, working with computers taught me to stop wearing anything on my wrists – it slows me down, irritates me and I end up taking bracelets off and – yes – losing them.

So this is a long way of saying, today I bought a watch.  Not an expensive one.  Just a swatch but I finally decided a watch is what’s missing from my life. You see I get very little “down” time.  When I do get downtime I know I have a set window to relax before I have to get some more work done.  That means I have to keep picking up my phone to check the time.  When I pick up my phone to check the time, I see mail notifications or text messages or am reminded of 1000 other things I should be doing in that moment instead of just sitting and reading.

The devices that tell me the time are also now inextricably linked with “work” and therefore “stress”.  A watch is now the easiest and least stressful way to actually tell the time.  It’s an interesting full circle and I wonder if it’s just me.