Those of you who have followed Jack Baruth for any amount of time know that he is a connoisseur of fine, expensive watches. I am not.
But when my old Apple Watch stopped holding a charge, I thought about whether I would replace it. Mostly for two reasons:
- We’re still running on a lean mixture here until I fill out my work schedule. Or maybe permanently if we get used to it.
- I’m thinking about de-MBAing my life a little. I mean, the Apple Watch, even my old one, tracked a whole host of metrics–stand goals, active minutes goals, exercise goals…. All arbitrary and determined by an algorithm I didn’t know. Still, I found myself working to hit those goals even if they didn’t make sense in doing so. Like getting up and walking around the house when I awakened in the night to get a stand hour in case I had a long nap or long meeting later in the day. I mean, I can tell how I’m doing by how I feel and how much exercise I’m getting (currently: not much) by how I feel and whether I have the good muscle soreness or how I sleep at night. So do I need to hit artificial targets determined by Cupertino? Or am I just nerfing on this because I’m not getting my allotment of martial arts classes and gym sessions anyway? Time will tell.
So I dug into my bureau for old watches (including a daddy watch) that I wore before my FitBit… what, seven or eight years ago?
Of course, after that length of time, the batteries were dead. In the olden days, I’d take it to the shopping mall and one of the guys at a kiosk would have sold me a new battery and would have installed it. But if I’m not going to the gym, you know I’m not going to the mall (well, unless it’s an antique mall). So I popped open the backs and got the memory sizes, and…. Of course, I did not have any button batteries of that size in hand.
I mean, I have all sorts of button batteries of various sizes from remotes, children’s toys, and other things, but not for actual watches. But since they’re sold in ten packs on Amazon for $6, I order ten and they linger in my battery cabinet for…. Well, archeologists will eventually have to tell you when they’re done lingering, as I’m unlikely to use them all.
So now, look at la-di-dah me, with two watches from which to choose:
Of course, I only wear the silver one because a brown watchband might indicate I would have to match it with something. And color-coordination in clothing is not a skill of mine.
So now I have 8 more of these batteries in the cabinet. I can take up watch repair (battery replacement anyway). Or, if I live for thirty years, perhaps I can replace the batteries on these watches four more times. And they’ll likely spend most of that time in the drawer where they’ve spent the last half-a-decade-and-more since I don’t wear this kind of watch in the house, and I don’t leave the house all that much.
