How I Lost the Watch Plot

Six months ago, I was living in a rare state of horological peace. My collection was small, disciplined, and complete: seven Seiko divers, each mounted on a Divecore FKM strap. Some straps were black, some orange. After twenty years of swapping straps, chasing combinations, and second-guessing myself, I had finally found alignment. The watches felt right. The system felt right. I was, for once, connected.

Then came the study.

Someone alerted me to a Notre Dame report suggesting that PFAS—“forever chemicals”—could leach into the skin from FKM rubber. The strap world stiffened. The finding itself was questionable; the testing conditions resembled industrial abuse, not normal wear. Still, the principle of unnecessary risk began whispering: Why expose yourself to something you don’t have to?

So I did what anxious rational people do. I removed the FKM straps and told myself I was being prudent.

The problem was immediate.

The connection vanished.

Bracelets went on. Bracelets came off. Vulcanized rubber, silicone, back to bracelets, back to rubber. The watches still told time, but the emotional voltage was gone. And when I returned to the Divecore straps, the old satisfaction flickered—until the worry returned a few days later and drove me back to something “safer.”

I had entered a Risk Contamination Cascade—the psychological chain reaction that begins when a low-probability hazard lodges in the mind and spreads beyond its original scope. The issue was no longer PFAS. The issue was doubt. The study didn’t just question a material; it destabilized a system that had been working.

Meanwhile, Divecore responded to the same study. Their upcoming Waffle strap, originally planned in FKM, was delayed and reformulated in hydrogenated rubber. I ordered one. It arrives in a month. If it works, I’ll retrofit the collection.

But something else happened while I waited.

Restless. Slightly displaced. Perhaps bored. Perhaps still addicted to motion. I added two watches: a gunmetal Citizen Super Titanium diver and a G-Shock Frogman.

Would I have bought them if the Notre Dame study had never appeared and my Seikos had remained happily married to their Divecore straps?

I honestly don’t know.

The question came to me directly from a viewer on my YouTube channel:

“McMahon, I thought you were content with your seven Seikos. What happened?”

I could have given the collector’s answer—diversification, appreciation, aesthetic curiosity. Instead, I told the truth:

“I lost the plot.”

It was the only honest explanation. I had experienced a Plot Loss Event—the moment when decisions are no longer guided by enjoyment or intention but by anxiety, restlessness, and narrative drift. External triggers—a study, a forum discussion, a rumor—become convenient villains. But the deeper shift is internal: contentment gives way to motion without direction.

To be fair, the Notre Dame study didn’t create the anxiety. It simply opened the door.

Before the study, I lived in a Watch Happy Zone. After it, I felt expelled from a stable ecosystem. The mind shifted into precaution mode. And precaution, once activated, rarely stops at one adjustment.

FKM to silicone.
Silicone to bracelets.
Bracelets back to rubber.

Each move reduced theoretical risk while increasing psychological instability. I was caught in a Precautionary Spiral—a loop of substitutions that never restored satisfaction.

The experience felt like wrestling a giant. The giant didn’t defeat me, but I walked away with a limp.

Now the hydrogenated Divecore Waffle is on its way. The Frogman is somewhere between customs forms and identity disclosures. And life, which once felt clean and contained, now feels slightly overgrown.

I know the honest accounting: my anxiety did the real damage. My tendency toward optimization, toward vigilance, toward self-interference.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t resent that study.

Before it, I had an oasis.

After it, the sand started shifting again.