Category: Confessions

Abducted by My Hygienist, Grounded by Reality

My dentist—one year younger than I am, which in our age bracket feels less like a difference and more like a rounding error—peered into my mouth and delivered his verdict with clinical calm: two abrasions, self-inflicted, the result of brushing with the zeal of a man trying to erase his past. They would need fillings. Then, without missing a beat, he pivoted from my dental erosion to his own existential one. At sixty-three, he said, fatigue had begun to collect in the corners of his life. Travel, once a pleasure, had become an ordeal. He had lost interest in vacations altogether.

He offered evidence. His sister-in-law had been stranded in Dubai while missiles stitched the sky over Iran. When she finally escaped, her flight climbed higher than usual to avoid the problem of being blown out of the sky—a detail that tends to sour the in-flight experience. Twenty hours later she landed in Dallas, dazed and displaced, only to discover she still needed to purchase a separate ticket to get home to Los Angeles. The modern vacation: a geopolitical obstacle course with snacks.

I told him I understood completely. I, too, have entered the era of strategic energy management. I work out five days a week, yes—but I also schedule two naps a day with the seriousness of board meetings. Europe, at this point, feels less like a destination and more like a test of endurance. Cabo I can handle—two hours, a controlled burst. Miami, perhaps, if I marshal my resources. But a transatlantic flight? The return on investment collapses. The juice is no longer worth the squeeze.

While we were discussing the slow recalibration of ambition, his technician went to work on my teeth with a collection of instruments that sounded like extraterrestrial diplomats arguing through a metal wall. Half sedated by the hum and whine, I drifted into the plausible conclusion that I had been abducted. Not metaphorically—literally. I was on a ship, somewhere above the atmosphere, being examined by beings who had mastered interstellar travel but still hadn’t figured out how to make dental procedures pleasant.

Eventually, they released me—back into the chair, back into my life—with instructions to gargle fluoride and abstain from food and water for thirty minutes. The kind of post-op protocol that suggests the aliens, for all their advancements, remain deeply committed to inconvenience.

March 18, 2026
My 57-Minute Relationship with the G-Shock GW-6900

I got home at 5:00 p.m. to find my Amazon package waiting for me like a promise I didn’t remember making. Inside: the G-Shock GW-6900, the much-celebrated Three-Eyed Monster. I unboxed it, performed the usual initiation rituals—set it to LAX, marched through the modes, customized everything like a man preparing a command center—and then attempted the simplest task imaginable: return to Timekeeping.

Impossible.

No matter what I pressed, held, or pleaded with, the watch snapped back to UTC like a bureaucrat rejecting incomplete paperwork. I consulted the manual. I consulted YouTube. I even consulted AI, that modern oracle of last resort. Nothing. The watch refused to cooperate, as if it had been programmed with a small but firm sense of contempt.

Meanwhile, the physical object itself began to lose its charm under scrutiny. Next to the Frogman and the 7900, the 6900 felt… cheap and underfed. Lighter, cheaper, less resolved. The strap clung to my wrist like it had second thoughts about the relationship—barely long enough, noticeably less comfortable. This wasn’t a heroic tool watch. This was a compromise wearing a reputation.

The decision arrived with unusual clarity: return it.

By 5:57 p.m., I had already processed its return on Amazon, dropped it off at the nearby UPS, and said good riddance. It is now on its way back to wherever failed expectations are processed. I had made the round trip—anticipation, confusion, disappointment, rejection—in under an hour. A full consumer arc compressed into a sitcom episode.

Now the house is quiet again. Seven watches remain. The cognitive clutter has thinned. No more scrolling through modes like a man trapped in a digital maze. No more negotiating with a watch that refuses to tell time on command.

The 6900 is gone.

And for the first time today, everything is exactly where it should be, and I can now move forward with my life.

Update:

Two friends messaged me to explain that with the 6900 you don’t press the upper left button to exit UTC and get into Timekeeping. You press the upper right button, so the watch was probably not defective. But it was so inferior to the 7900 in terms of build quality and strap length that I’m glad I returned it.

March 17, 2026
The Discipline of Less: How One Watch and Three Meals Without Snacks Will Save Your Sanity

My G-Shock Frogman has become my horological Holy Grail—the watch that ends the endless tribunal of wrist-rotation decisions. No more standing before the watch box like a minor bureaucrat weighing options no one asked for. The Frogman abolishes the committee. It declares: This is the watch. Proceed with your life.

The 3-Meals-a-Day Plan performs the same quiet coup in my diet. It eliminates the constant negotiations with the fridge, the whispered justifications for a “quick snack” that metastasizes into a caloric ambush. Three meals. Defined borders. No loopholes. The hunger doesn’t disappear—it files a complaint—but the chaos does.

Both systems teach the same unfashionable truth: happiness is less about expansion than restriction. The modern instinct is to maximize choice, to curate endlessly, to keep every option alive like a hedge fund of desires. But abundance breeds friction. Every additional option is another small burden, another decision tax. The Frogman removes the tax. The 3-Meal Plan shuts down the snack economy. What remains is not deprivation but clarity.

Yes, you lose variety. The other watches sit in their velvet purgatory. The snacks call out from the kitchen like minor demons. But something more valuable takes their place: a clean line between decision and action. You stop asking, What should I wear? What should I eat? and start living inside the answer.

And in that narrowing, something unexpected happens—you bond with the choice you’ve made. The Frogman becomes not just a watch but a fixed point. The 3-Meal Plan becomes not just a diet but a structure that holds you together when appetite tries to scatter you.

So the command is simple, almost severe:

Wear the Frogman.
Eat the three meals.

Not because you have to—but because without boundaries, everything dissolves into noise.

March 17, 2026
Why I’m Not Fully G-Shockified (Yet)
A month ago, I fell—hard—for the G-Shock Frogman GWF-1000. Not a mild infatuation. Not a passing curiosity. A full conversion experience. Within days, I recruited two accomplices—the GW-7900 Rescue and the GW-6900 Three-Eyed Monster—and suddenly my mechanical divers, once the crown jewels of my collection, were sitting in the watch box like retired prizefighters telling stories no one asked to hear.

Let me be clear: I have not renounced them. I still admire the Seiko SLA055. I still regard the quartz Tuna SBBN049 with something close to reverence. But admiration is not the same as use. Once you’ve tasted atomic time—precise, indifferent, quietly superior—it’s difficult to return to the charming imprecision of mechanical watches. You don’t switch back from filtered water to a garden hose unless nostalgia is doing the driving.

And I’m not alone. Since confessing my condition, I’ve received a steady stream of testimonials. Men who bought a GW-M5610 or a GW-5000U and quietly stopped wearing everything else. Not because they planned to. Not because they declared war on their collections. But because the G-Shock—comfortable, accurate, frictionless—refused to leave their wrist. Their curiosity still wandered, their addiction still whispered, but the watch stayed put. Anchored. Unmoved.

This phenomenon deserves a name: G-Shockification.

It is the moment when a watch enthusiast, steeped in the romance of mechanical horology, is overtaken by the brute efficiency of atomic precision. At first, there is resistance. Then rationalization. Finally, surrender. Variety collapses. The rotation dies. The watch box becomes a museum, and the G-Shock becomes the only living artifact. What began as a hobby turns into a single, dominant habit—quiet, practical, and oddly liberating.

Some resist the change. Some embrace it. Some preach it like a new religion. But they all share one outcome: the mechanical watch, once a daily companion, becomes an occasional guest.

Which brings me to the uncomfortable question: Have I been G-Shockified?

The honest answer is: not quite.

I have my objections. With a G-Shock, I cannot simply glance at the time. I must present the watch to my face like an offering, or press a button and summon light—an act that triggers a faint but persistent anxiety about draining the solar charge. In a dark movie theater, the problem becomes almost philosophical. Do I illuminate my wrist and disrupt the room? Or do I behave like a civilized adult and wear something else?

This is where the quartz Tuna reenters the story.

Since my G-Shock conversion began, the Tuna has enjoyed a quiet renaissance. It is as if atomic time granted me permission to appreciate quartz accuracy without guilt. At night, it is flawless—constant lume, instant readability, no negotiation required. It does not ask for a button press. It does not demand a ritual. It simply tells the time, like a professional.

And so I arrive at a compromise.

I am not fully G-Shockified because I am not willing to tolerate certain frictions: the angle-sensitive readability, the dependence on backlight, the small social calculations about when it is appropriate to illuminate my wrist. These are minor issues, but they are enough to prevent total surrender.

What I have instead is something more complicated: Hybridification.

My collection is now split down the middle—four analog watches, four G-Shocks. This is not harmony. It is a negotiated settlement. The G-Shocks govern precision, durability, and daily utility. The analog watches—especially the Tuna—reclaim territory where immediate readability and luminous clarity matter.

The result is a managed tension between two philosophies:
- the digital world of accuracy, convenience, and indifference
- the analog world of presence, legibility, and quiet satisfaction
It is not a perfect system. But it is stable.

For now.
March 17, 2026
Escaping the G-Shock Dopamine Hamster Wheel

I offer no apologies for wearing my G-Shock Frogman with the unfiltered delight of a boy kneeling in the sandbox, staging epic battles with a platoon of GI Joes. When I strap that amphibious brick to my wrist, a certain kind of theater begins. I become a heroic caricature of myself—a grizzled football coach barking orders, a deep-sea operative, a cyborg navigator of hostile terrain. It’s ridiculous, yes. But it’s also fun. And fun, when properly contained, is one of life’s few renewable resources.

The key phrase, of course, is properly contained. Because there’s a difference between fun and desperation, and any hobby that survives long enough eventually reveals the line between the two.

Right now my G-Shock situation sits comfortably on the side of fun. I own three models: the Frogman, the GW-7900, and the GW-6900. By coincidence—or perhaps by horological fate—each of these watches debuted in 2009. That means the design language on my wrist has survived seventeen years without revision. The 6900, in fact, traces its lineage back to 1995, when the digital watch still believed it might someday conquer the Earth.

In other words, I have not assembled a museum of the new. I have assembled a small triumvirate of classics. No influencer told me to buy them. No YouTube oracle guided my hand. I simply chose them myself. It’s comforting to believe, even briefly, that one’s consumer decisions were made under the influence of free will.

And I genuinely enjoy wearing them. When I look down at the wrist, something childish and harmless awakens. The imagination reactivates. Suddenly I’m a spy, a special-ops diver, a space monster, and occasionally a wrestling coach with a suspiciously tactical sense of timekeeping. I accept this man-child energy. I embrace it. There are worse midlife coping mechanisms than a durable plastic watch that makes you smile.

But every hobby contains traps, and the G-Shock world offers two of them in fluorescent colors.

The first is the dopamine hamster wheel. This is the stage where watches cease being tools and begin behaving like glazed donuts. One purchase leads to another, then another, until the collector starts foaming with evangelical excitement over limited editions, colorways, and collaborations with Japanese streetwear designers whose names sound like software updates. The language shifts from appreciation to hysteria. FOMO spreads like a rash. Consumer diabetes sets in.

That spectacle has nothing to do with why G-Shock exists.

The brand was born to serve people who actually need tough watches—rescue workers, law enforcement officers, soldiers, wilderness guides. It was designed to provide durable, accurate timekeeping to people whose jobs might involve cliffs, oceans, explosions, or at least a very bad Tuesday. It was never intended to become a glittering shrine to hype.

So I refuse to ride the hamster wheel.

The second trap is attention hunger. Sharing enthusiasm for a hobby is healthy. Talking about watches with fellow enthusiasts can be joyful. But somewhere along the spectrum, conversation mutates into performance. The watch becomes less about personal enjoyment and more about being seen enjoying it.

And that distinction reminds me of a film I loved in high school: Saturday Night Fever.

John Travolta’s Tony Manero dominates the disco floor with effortless charisma. When he dances with Stephanie Mangano, the attention they receive feels earned. Their chemistry produces its own gravitational field. People watch because something authentic is happening.

But the film also shows another kind of attention.

Tony’s friend Bobby C., trapped by family shame and a pregnancy he feels powerless to handle, tries desperately to be noticed. Near the end of the film, he asks Tony to look at a new shirt he bought. It’s a small request—a fragile signal that he wants someone to see him. Tony barely registers it. Shortly afterward, Bobby climbs the bridge railing and falls to his death.

The moment lingers because it exposes the difference between joyful attention and desperate attention.

When I think about my G-Shocks, I want to remain firmly on the joyful side of that divide. I don’t want to become the collector who escalates endlessly into more extreme watches—bigger, louder, rarer—while begging the internet to notice. In this regard, I want to employ the Contained Fun Principle: the discipline of enjoying a hobby while consciously preventing it from expanding into compulsive acquisition. The Contained Fun Principle recognizes that pleasure remains healthy only when boundaries are enforced—when a collector deliberately limits the size of the collection so the hobby remains play rather than psychological obligation.

Once containment is gone, the fun is gone.

Once containment is gone, I’m in the Bobby C. Zone.

So for now I’ll keep things simple. Three G-Shocks. Three classic designs. All born in 2009. I’ll enjoy the boyish pleasure they bring and try to stay off the dopamine treadmill.

After all, the whole point of a watch is to tell time—not to consume it.

March 16, 2026
The Multi-Headed Dopamine Monster

Any halfway attentive observer eventually stumbles upon a depressing but unmistakable truth: modern life is a carnival of pleasures engineered to be irresistible and endlessly repeatable. Physical indulgence, consumer toys, and the shimmering applause of social media metrics arrive every day like trays of free samples at a supermarket. The problem is not their existence. The problem is their limitless availability. When gratification can be summoned instantly—one click, one swipe, one purchase—the temptation to pursue it with manic dedication becomes nearly impossible to resist.

The results are rarely noble. Self-discipline dissolves. Organization frays. Focus collapses like a folding chair under a heavy guest. In their place arrives a nervous state of agitation accompanied by a dull, persistent suspicion: You are wasting your life on trinkets. The realization is humiliating because it is so obvious. Hedonism, convenience, consumerism, and the intoxicating glow of digital approval are not spiritual achievements. They are simply the brain chasing dopamine like a lab rat pounding a reward lever.

At first the dopamine feels marvelous. A new gadget, a flattering comment, a few hundred views, the pleasing geometry of a purchase confirmation page. But like all stimulants, the effect fades. The rewards grow thinner. The hits arrive faster but satisfy less. Eventually a quiet despair creeps in. You feel oddly disconnected—from other people, from yourself, from the adult you imagined becoming. You begin asking dangerous questions. Is there anything meaningful enough to lift you out of this quicksand of micro-pleasures? Is there any pursuit capable of competing with the relentless ease of cheap gratification?

You remember that you possess other faculties—creativity, curiosity, philosophical struggle, the ability to tell a story that might illuminate something about the human condition. These pursuits possess real dignity. Yet they struggle to survive in the same ecosystem as frictionless entertainment and effortless affirmation. The brain, like a spoiled monarch, prefers velvet pillows to hard chairs.

Eventually the interrogation becomes more specific. The real engine of this predicament is not merely pleasure but technology. Your phone and computer function as a many-headed dopamine creature sitting permanently on your desk. Slaying the monster would be satisfying—but impossible. Unlike alcohol, which the addict can abandon entirely, the digital world is inseparable from modern survival. You need the machine to work, communicate, pay bills, manage life, create things, and occasionally attempt to think.

So you continue to live beside the creature.

You read the tidy aphorisms offered by productivity gurus: Be mindful. Stay disciplined. Follow your North Star. But these slogans feel faintly ridiculous when the dopamine cauldron sits inches away—one browser tab from ignition. The advice begins to sound less like wisdom and more like a variety of motivational wallpaper.

And so you arrive at a strange emotional position.

You do not yet possess a solution. But you possess something useful: anger. Anger at the machinery of distraction. Anger at the cheapness of digital applause. Anger at your own willingness to accept the bargain.

It is not a cure, but it is a beginning.

You can see the problem clearly now.

The only remaining question is what you intend to do about it.

March 16, 2026
The Seiko Tuna Epiphany: A Late-Night Strategy for Escaping Watch Madness

Last night, while watching television with my wife in a room lit about as brightly as a submarine corridor, I made a small but unsettling discovery: I am not always in the mood to press the G-Shock light button just to see the time. Not because the button is difficult—it isn’t—but because every tap reminds me that I’m siphoning a little solar life from the battery. For a normal person, this would register as trivia. For someone like me, it becomes a moral drama about energy management.

Earlier that day both my G-Shocks—the Frogman and the GW-7900—were sitting at the dreaded Medium charge level. Medium is technically acceptable, but emotionally intolerable. So I placed them on the windowsill for four hours like two reptiles basking on a warm rock. By evening they had risen to the only status that calms my nervous system: High.

Wanting to give their solar batteries a night of rest—and perhaps to give my brain a rest as well—I hung the GW-7900 on the industrial T-bar stand so it could quietly chase atomic signals overnight. In its place I strapped on my quartz Seiko Tuna SBBN049. The room was dark, but the Tuna’s lume glowed like a tiny lighthouse. No button pressing. No anxiety about draining solar reserves. Just the quiet satisfaction of luminous markers doing their job without negotiation.

And something interesting happened: I rediscovered the Tuna.

While I’ve been cooling off from my mechanical divers, this quartz brute suddenly felt…perfect. Reliable. Legible. Calm. A watch that does not demand emotional supervision.

Then a second realization arrived.

The Tuna—already equipped with sapphire—might quietly occupy the exact niche I’ve been trying to justify filling with the sapphire Frogman, the thousand-dollar titanium idol currently whispering to me from the internet.

If the Tuna fills that lane, several pleasant consequences follow.

First, I stop the collection at eight watches, a number that still resembles discipline rather than pathology.

Second, I avoid introducing a sapphire Frogman that would inevitably start competing with my beloved Frogman GWF-1000, turning the watch box into a small arena of amphibious rivalry.

Third, the Tuna—currently receiving about as much wrist time as a museum artifact—gets to live again.

Fourth, I avoid spending nine hundred dollars on what is essentially a prestige upgrade: a watch whose improvements amount to slightly clearer digits and bragging rights for social media spectators.

Fifth, I avoid paying nearly a thousand dollars for a watch that, if I squint hard enough and tilt my head toward the light like a suspicious jeweler, looks almost identical to the one I already own.

What I’m really saying, ladies and gentlemen, is that I’m searching for an exit ramp.

Not an exit from watches entirely, but an exit from the compulsion to keep expanding the collection as if the next acquisition might finally calm the storm.

Because the truth is obvious. My eight watches already do everything a watch can possibly do. Another one at this point isn’t a tool—it’s an additional weight tied to the ankle of enjoyment.

Another watch becomes an anchor.

Another watch becomes kryptonite.

Another watch dilutes the potency of the ones I already love.

Of course, this is the speech I’m giving myself this morning. Whether I remain faithful to it is another matter entirely. A watch obsessive, after all, is simply a man locked in a polite but relentless argument with himself.

And perhaps that is the broader human condition. The very pursuits that bring us joy—hobbies, ambitions, passions—also contain the seeds of excess. Mishandled, they curdle. What began as pleasure turns into agitation.

These are the thoughts rushing through my brain today, pouring forward like a swollen river after heavy rain.

If it weren’t watches, it would be something else.

That much, I know for certain.

March 16, 2026
The Moral Danger of Divine Cheesecake

Last night I had a dream that unfolded with the logic and extravagance of a Fellini film set on a public beach. I discovered a stray dog wandering along the shoreline, a scruffy creature with the melancholy dignity of someone who had seen too much of the world’s indifference. The dog could speak. His first words were disbelief. He could not imagine that I, a random human loitering by the Pacific, intended to adopt him.

To prove my sincerity—and perhaps to apologize for the miserable hand life had dealt him—I performed what can only be described as an act of culinary sorcery. With no apparent effort, I summoned two desserts out of thin air and placed them on a small café table facing the ocean. One was a mango cheesecake the size of a steering wheel, glowing with tropical radiance. The other was a monumental chocolate cake decorated with extravagant ribbons and shell-like ridges of frosting, the sort of cake that looks less baked than sculpted.

The dog, clearly a creature of refinement, approached the cake with delicate reverence, nibbling with the restraint of a Parisian pastry critic. I told him not to worry—I knew of special utensils designed specifically for dogs who wished to eat cake with dignity. I would run downtown and return in minutes.

That’s when the trouble began.

When I returned to the café table, I found a woman plunging a bakery knife into my cake with the stealth of a pirate raiding a treasure chest. I launched into a lecture about theft and decency. Mid-sermon, another woman attempted a lightning strike on the mango cheesecake, hoping to slice off a piece before the moral police arrived. I drove her off as well.

In that moment it dawned on me: these desserts were not ordinary desserts. They were supernatural artifacts. Something about their beauty radiated outward like perfume, alerting passersby that heaven had briefly opened a bakery on the beach. People could sense it. They were willing to bend their morals for a taste. And I had a darker suspicion—once someone tasted the cakes, the bending of morals might turn into a full collapse.

The dog and I decided the beach was no longer safe for divine pastries. We relocated to the lobby of a nearby hotel, where the two of us quietly devoured the cakes like conspirators protecting a sacred relic. Strangely, the effect on us was the opposite of what I had feared. Each bite seemed to make us kinder, calmer, more decent versions of ourselves.

Between bites, I told the dog he would never be homeless again. He would live with me forever. He thanked me with the solemn gratitude only a talking beach dog can muster.

Then he asked the obvious question: how had I managed to summon cakes of such celestial quality?

I admitted the truth. I had no idea what I had done or how I had done it. But one thing was clear: it was a one-time miracle. The bakery of heaven had closed its doors.

The rest of our lives, the dog and I would have to live on ordinary meals—and the memory of that impossible dessert.

March 16, 2026
The Sapphire Frogman Temptation: Is the Final Watch the Cure—or the Disease?

I recently sold a few mechanical divers and, as a result, committed a small but dangerous financial act: I created enough liquidity to purchase the sapphire G-Shock Frogman—the DLC-armored Holy Grail of the G-Shock cult. The beast sits there on the internet, gleaming like a jeweled idol, whispering promises of final satisfaction. It might be magnificent in my collection. Or it might behave like every other supposed “final watch,” which is to say it will bring three weeks of exhilaration followed by a fresh outbreak of neurosis.

That is the problem. I’m beginning to suspect the hobby itself is the neurosis. At my age, accumulating watches no longer feels like curating a collection; it feels like feeding a psychological raccoon that keeps rummaging through my brain at night. The raccoon never says, “Good work. Eight watches is enough.” It says, “Interesting… but have you considered one more?”

If the sapphire Frogman truly represented an Exit—a gleaming DLC-coated door marked Freedom From Horological Madness—I would buy it without hesitation. Swipe the card. Close the chapter. Walk away a healed man. But experience suggests a darker possibility: the real exit may not be a thousand-dollar watch at all. The real exit might be something far less glamorous—stopping now, accepting the modest dignity of an eight-watch collection, and quietly moving on with the rest of my life.

March 15, 2026
Late to the G-Shock Party

Even though I’ve been obsessed with watches for over twenty years, I arrived embarrassingly late to the G-Shock party. I didn’t plan the arrival. It felt more like this: I’m riding in the back seat of an Uber when the driver suddenly pulls up in front of a strange mansion glowing with neon light. The doors swing open. Inside are thousands of loud, jubilant G-Shock devotees who greet me like a long-lost cousin. Champagne appears. Confetti rains down. Someone hands me a microphone and asks for a testimonial.

I have no prepared remarks. But I can tell the truth.

For two decades I was perfectly happy collecting Seiko mechanical divers. They were my tribe. Yet somewhere in the back of my mind a particular watch kept whispering to me: the G-Shock Frogman. I had admired it on and off for over a decade. Amazingly, the same model was still available, so I finally ordered one from Japan. A watch that once would have cost me $400 now demanded $550, which is the sort of price inflation that causes a small twitch in the eyelid.

When the Frogman arrived, something strange happened.

I couldn’t take it off.

The watch felt uncannily right, as if some committee of Japanese engineers had secretly studied my personality and designed a wrist instrument to match it. It was heroic, absurdly tough, and far more accurate than my mechanical divers. Within weeks I stopped wearing the mechanicals altogether. Three of them quietly left the collection. Whether I’m taking a mechanical hiatus or attending their funeral remains unclear.

What I do know is that G-Shock has given my watch hobby a strange second life.

At the moment I own two of them: the Frogman and the GW-7900. Viewers on my YouTube channel insisted the 7900 deserved a proper name. A subscriber named Dave solved the problem immediately. “Call it the Tidemaster,” he said, since the watch tracks tides.

Perfect.

So now I have the Frogman and the Tidemaster. One cost me $550. The other cost $110.

Here’s the truth no luxury marketing department wants to hear: from a purely practical standpoint, the $110 Tidemaster is the better watch. Its numerals are larger, thicker, and darker. The contrast is superior. At night the backlight illuminates big bold digits that practically shout the time. The Frogman, by comparison, requires a small squint and a mild prayer.

In other words, the cheap watch wins the legibility contest.

A third watch is arriving next week: the G-Shock GW-6900. Like the 7900, it currently lacks a proper nickname. The watch has three round indicators above the display, which makes it look like a mildly deranged insect. I considered several possibilities. “Triple Graph” sounds like a geometry exam. “Militaire” sounds like a fragrance sold in an airport duty-free shop. So I’m going with the obvious choice:

The 3-Eyed Monster.

My goal is simple: settle into a stable Three-Watch G-Shock Trifecta. All three watches share the same genetic code—big heroic cases, atomic timekeeping, solar charging, digital displays, and rubber straps. That combination is my personal sweet spot.

Now we arrive at the temptation.

Many of you have suggested I should upgrade to the sapphire-crystal Frogman, a watch that lurks around the $1,000 mark. And believe me, that watch is occupying prime real estate in my brain. But I’d like to present a few rebuttals before I surrender to the credit card.

First, price. The Tidemaster and the 3-Eyed Monster cost about $110 each. Even the Frogman stayed under $600. Part of the joy of G-Shock is that it delivers durability, accuracy, and ridiculous hero aesthetics without the emotional trauma of a four-figure purchase. Once you push a G-Shock toward a thousand dollars, you start undermining the very spirit that makes the watch fun.

Second, technical overkill. The sapphire Frogman is loaded with features I will never use. Yes, the display is slightly more legible than my existing Frogman, but that problem is already solved by the Tidemaster and the 3-Eyed Monster.

Third, rotational anxiety. Two Frogmans would cancel each other out. I doubt I could sell my current Frogman—it has already fused itself to my identity like a stubborn barnacle.

Fourth, and perhaps most decisive, is age. If I were in my thirties or forties, building a large G-Shock collection might make sense. But I’ll be turning sixty-five this year. I don’t need a museum of watches. Between four Seiko mechanical divers, a quartz Seiko Tuna, and my three G-Shocks, I already have more watches than any reasonable human requires.

In fact, I could easily imagine a future where I own nothing but the three G-Shocks and feel perfectly content.

So there you have it.

Will temptation vanish completely? Of course not. Tonight I may dream about the sapphire Frogman. In a moment of midnight weakness I might even sleep-walk to my computer and hover over the Buy Now button.

But I like to believe that the reasonable part of my brain will prevail over the dopamine addict who lives next door.

At least that’s the story I’m telling myself.

March 14, 2026