What follows is the essay that will serve as the basis for my YouTube video explaining why no such video can, in fact, be made from it.
Six weeks ago, I received my G-Shock Frogman and promptly lost my mind. Not gradually. Not with dignified hesitation. I went down hard. The more I studied its lopsided, industrial architecture, the more I found myself staring at it the way one stares at brutalist buildings—confused at first, then strangely moved. Black resin, thick as a tire wall, sat on my wrist with the quiet confidence of a machine that does not care if you approve of it. No one told me industrial black resin could look so beautiful.
This startled me. I had long filed resin under “gym timer” and “Office Space despair”—the sort of material worn by men who have stopped expecting things from life. What kind of man sidelines a stable of expensive mechanical divers—curated, polished, lovingly rationalized—for a slab of molded polymer that costs a fraction of the least expensive piece in the box? The answer, apparently, is me. Something shifted. I can’t explain it. It may take years, or therapy, or both.
Naturally, I doubled down.
Intoxicated by the Frogman, I added the GW-7900 Rescue, a watch that costs about one-fifth as much and delivers five times the daily utility. It is padded, legible, and indifferent to my previous standards. Its numerals are large enough to read without squinting, which, at this stage of life, qualifies as a luxury feature. It became my daily wearer within a week, displacing watches that once required white gloves and a sense of occasion.
Still unsatisfied, I escalated. The Mudman GW-9500 arrived next, with numerals that resemble municipal signage. If the Rescue was readable, the Mudman is unavoidable. Together, the three form what I have come to call—without irony—the Hero Triad.
All three are Multiband-6 with Tough Solar, which means they spend their nights quietly consulting the atomic clock in Fort Collins and correcting themselves with a level of discipline I have never achieved in any area of my life. The Frogman and Mudman prefer to be placed carefully—on a desk, or hanging from my T-bar like well-behaved instruments. The Rescue, by contrast, syncs wherever it pleases. It has the personality of a straight-A student who does not need supervision.
These three watches now consume over ninety percent of my wrist time. My mechanical divers sit in their box like retired generals, decorated but irrelevant. When I told my wife this, she paused and asked, “Wrist time? Who uses that term?”
I do. We do. We count wrist time the way bodybuilders count macros—with vigilance, denial, and occasional self-deception. And lately, my wrist time has been taken over by G-Shock.
I’ve written about this infatuation on my blog, but my YouTube audience has made something clear: words are no longer enough. We live in an age where ideas must be performed, not merely stated. If I want to be understood, I must produce a video.
And yet, I cannot make this video.
First, the landscape is saturated. There are already hundreds of G-Shock videos—reviews, tutorials, warnings about imminent discontinuations delivered with the urgency of a public safety alert. To add my voice would be to echo the chorus, and I have no desire to hear myself harmonizing with better singers.
Second, I refuse to become an evangelist. I am not here to declare a holy war against Seiko, Tudor, or Omega. This is not a zero-sum game. I have not betrayed mechanical watches with a Judas Iscariot kiss and fled into the desert with a resin accomplice. I still believe in their beauty. I simply no longer rely on them for giving me accurate time. That distinction is subtle, and subtlety does not perform well on YouTube.
Third, I lack a coherent explanation for my conversion. I cannot tell you whether this shift is driven by age, by proximity to retirement, or by a growing intolerance for approximation in a world already saturated with it. Perhaps I simply escaped Seikotraz—the self-imposed prison of mechanical devotion—and ran toward the first open door. Whatever the cause, I am not yet qualified to narrate it.
Fourth, my story is not unique. Millions discovered G-Shock long before I arrived, breathless and late, to report that it works. To stand before an audience and announce this would reduce me to a background character—another man discovering electricity and insisting on a press conference.
Fifth—and most damning—this narrative reads like a watch downgrade. The story people want is ascent: the climb, the conquest, the triumphant pose at the summit. I have done the opposite. I have descended, calmly, into black resin. I have traded filet mignon for a protein bar and now stand before you insisting it is not only sufficient, but superior. This is not a heroic arc. It is a dietary confession. And possibly a sign of a pathology.
So no, I cannot make this video.
My escape from Seikotraz may or may not be complete. What I can promise is this: when the next chapter reveals itself—and it will—I’ll report back, possibly with less confusion, but no guarantees. Aren’t you glad I didn’t make this video?
Cinemorphosis 
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