Escape from Seikotraz: Starring Jeff McMahon

This morning I woke up with a small, undeserved victory. My second shingles shot had not flattened me into a feverish heap of aches and regret. No vaccine hangover. No sack-of-muscle soreness. Just a functioning body and a clear head. I glanced down at my Casio G-Shock GW-7900 before swinging my legs out of bed, and as I reached for the coffee ritual, a thought crept in—quiet at first, then strangely intoxicating:

What if I owned only G-Shocks?

What if I were free of my Seiko divers?

Free from what, exactly? That part remains stubbornly undefined.

Three years ago, the fracture began. I developed an aversion to bracelets—not a mild preference, but a full-blown irritation, as if every metal link were conspiring against my wrist. I moved my Seiko divers onto straps, experimenting like a man searching for ergonomic salvation, until I discovered Divecore FKM. Suddenly, everything clicked. The watches felt right—balanced, secure, almost inevitable. For a brief moment, I thought I had solved the problem.

Then came the contamination.

August 2025. A message. A study. PFAS—“forever chemicals”—lurking in FKM. The phrase alone sounded like a villain in a low-budget sci-fi film. Dutifully, almost piously, I removed the straps. The watches went back onto inferior substitutes, and with that small act, something essential drained out of them. They were no longer “just right.” They were tolerable.

Divecore, to their credit, pivoted—hydrogenated rubber, safer materials, a new Waffle strap on the way. I’m waiting for it now, like a man waiting for a repaired marriage.

But in that interim, I did something careless. Or revealing.

On a lark, I bought a Casio G-Shock Frogman GWF-1000.

And I didn’t just like it. I fell for it immediately.

Its design wasn’t elegant—it was aggressively industrial, almost defiant. Its timekeeping wasn’t approximate—it was absolute. Atomic. Unquestionable. It didn’t ask for attention; it delivered certainty. One watch became three. The Rescue. The incoming Casio G-Shock GW-9500 Mudman. A quiet shift became a migration.

This morning, still basking in my vaccine survival, I entertained a more radical thought: eliminate the Seikos entirely. Replace them with two final pieces—the sapphire Frogman D1000 and the GW-5000U Square, my so-called “dress watch,” a term that feels almost satirical in this context.

At what point does a preference become a slide?

Was it the PFAS scare that loosened the foundation? Or something deeper? Do the Seiko divers now carry the residue of an older obsession—one tied to acquisition, to the promise that the next watch would finally complete the picture? And if so, what exactly is this new G-Shock phase? Liberation? Or simply addiction in a more utilitarian costume?

There are a few things I can say with certainty. I prefer atomic time to mechanical approximation. I prefer digital clarity to analog interpretation. Yes, the digital display demands a slight tilt of the wrist, a negotiation with the light, but I’ve made peace with that. It’s a small concession in exchange for precision.

Maybe there is no grand psychological drama here. Maybe I’ve grown lazy in the most practical sense. I like convenience. I like certainty. I like not having to set the time like a monk tending to a ceremonial clock. Perhaps this is not a crisis of identity but a simple shift toward ease.

But then I hear from others.

Men who made this transition years ago. Men who, after watching my videos, bought a G-Shock out of curiosity and quietly abandoned their mechanical collections. No fanfare. No farewell. Just a gradual, almost polite disappearance.

It suggests something larger. A quiet exodus.

You could make a documentary about it: aging watch obsessives laying down their expensive mechanical relics and walking into the sunset wearing Squares and Mudmans, relieved, unburdened, and slightly confused about how it happened.

Meanwhile, my own collection sits in a kind of purgatory. The Seiko divers wait, their fate undecided. Two have already been sold—the Captain Willard Ice Diver and the 62MAS—and their absence has not registered as loss. That’s the unsettling part. Watches that once felt essential have vanished without leaving a dent.

And here I was, thinking of myself as a careful curator, a man assembling a coherent, meaningful collection.

The truth is less flattering.

My hobby is governed not by principle, but by impulse. By shifting preferences, passing anxieties, and the occasional well-timed scare about “forever chemicals.” I would prefer to believe in a deeper logic, a narrative of refinement and evolution.

But honesty requires a different conclusion.

I am not curating.

I am drifting.

I look into the mirror. “Oh my God,” I scream. “I am a capricious watch collector.”

Meanwhile, my YouTube subscribers are making cogent remarks in the comment section. A gentleman who goes by the name of MDchaz recently wrote: “Coming to a theater near you “Escape from Seikotraz” starring Jeff McMahon.” I wrote back, “I’ll have to steal your idea for my next YouTube video.”

And this blog post.