Cinemorphosis

Tag: life

  • The Stories We Tell About Finding Happiness Are Probably False

    The Stories We Tell About Finding Happiness Are Probably False

    The other night, I released a video arguing that variety in a watch collection is overrated. Instead of chasing endless categories—divers, pilots, field watches, dress pieces, and the like—we should focus on our personal style and keep our collections small, tight, and true. That was the premise.

    But if I’m honest, I’m not sure I fully believe it. The video was part thought experiment, part self-intervention—an attempt to persuade myself to stop buying watches I don’t have the time (or wrist real estate) to wear. The argument had internal logic. It also had a faint scent of self-justifying desperation.

    And that’s okay. I enjoyed making it. Wrestling with the ideas sharpened my thoughts, and the feedback I received from many of you helped me realize something essential: passion without dialogue is narcissism. Ideas need to be tested by others—challenged, probed, broken open. That’s how belief is forged. Not in solitude, but in the noisy, messy public square.

    It was gratifying to hear from so many who, like me, have felt tormented by a sprawling watch collection—agonizing over wrist time, managing rotations like a circus act, and wondering if maybe the hobby was no longer bringing joy but anxiety in disguise.

    Then came a comment from one of you—Captain Nolan—who posed a question that cut through all my watch-reducing rhetoric:

    “How can you discover what your identity is without trying out watches in the various categories (divers, pilots, field, dress, digital, quartz, mechanical, etc., etc.)?”

    It’s a fair question. One I initially wanted to swat away with a tight two-sentence reply and move on. But I couldn’t. The question lingered—because it isn’t really about watches. It’s about identity. And once you start poking at identity, you’re no longer in YouTube comment territory. You’ve stepped into the philosophical deep end—an arena better suited for Aristotle than for a guy with a camera and a strap obsession.

    The second reason I hesitated is more personal: I only make videos when there’s a spark of fun, curiosity, or joy. The idea of producing a moody think-piece on self-discovery sounded like a slog. Dull. Pretentious. The video equivalent of being cornered by someone at a party who wants to discuss their enneagram type.

    Still, Captain Nolan’s question lodged itself in my mind. How do we figure out what we actually like in watches? And how—after two decades of collecting—did I land where I am now?

    The answer is both simple and brutal:

    There’s the true answer, and there’s the false answer.

    And most people—including YouTubers, influencers, and algorithm-chasing content creators—prefer the false one.

    The False Answer

    The false answer is a story. A myth. A satisfying narrative that wraps things up in a bow. We’ve been telling these stories for millennia. They bring moral clarity, personal triumph, and a happy ending. They sell. They go viral. They’re designed for applause.

    In the watch hobby, this tidy fable is called The Purification Myth.

    It goes something like this:

    You start off as a giddy newbie, blown away by the sheer number of watches out there. You binge. You buy everything from entry-level divers to Swiss Grails. You accumulate far too many watches to wear, and you convince yourself that this is happiness.

    But then comes the crash—maybe financial, maybe emotional, maybe romantic. The fever breaks. You wake up, ashamed of your bloated collection and the dopamine-fueled mania that built it. You sell off everything except a small, tasteful core collection. Peace is restored. Cue soft jazz. Fade to black.

    It’s a good story. It even has some truth in it. But like most recovery narratives, it’s cleaner than reality.

    Because in real life, the fever doesn’t always break for good. You relapse. You sell everything and then buy it all back. You swear off watches on bracelets, only to fall for a titanium chrono six months later. You go minimalist—and then buy a G-Shock with solar charging, atomic syncing, and more features than a fighter jet. Your tastes mutate.

    This is the part the Purification Myth leaves out: people are irrational, compulsive, and deeply inconsistent. And the stories they tell—about clarity, simplicity, “knowing what they want”—are often PR campaigns for whatever identity they’ve temporarily settled into.

    Let me give you some real-life examples.

    The Myth of Pete Rose

    I grew up on the myth of Charlie Hustle–Pete Rose, the man who played baseball like his hair was on fire. The story was simple: if you hustle like Pete, greatness will follow. The world will respect you. You’ll win.

    Turns out Pete Rose hustled only on the field. Off the field when it came to examining his moral flaws, he was a lazy, selfish, self-mythologizing gambler who bet recklessly and burned bridges like he lit cigars with them.

    The moral? The story was inspiring. It just wasn’t true.

    The Sedona Illusion

    My family recently went to Sedona, Arizona—a place that sells its own myth: come sip matcha, get a mud massage, and experience spiritual rebirth in the vortexes.

    What you get is overpriced kitsch, fake mysticism, and conspicuous consumerism wearing a tie-dyed robe. Crystals, smoothies, celebrities in Lamborghinis. It’s Disneyland for people who think they’re too enlightened for Disneyland.

    So yes, I could tell you a satisfying story about how I finally landed on a curated set of Seiko divers, all on straps, and how I found inner peace. But I won’t. Because that’s not the whole truth.

    The real story is messier, and ongoing. It contradicts itself. It evolves. Sometimes it forgets what it believes and remembers something else entirely.

    If you want to find your identity—watch or otherwise—know this: you won’t find it in a story. And you certainly won’t find it in someone else’s.

    You find it in the space between obsessions. In the quiet after the hype fades. In the awkwardness of realizing the thing you thought would make you whole… just doesn’t.

    That’s where identity lives. Not in clarity, but in contradiction.

  • The Farmer’s Carry and Other Acts of Suburban Defiance

    The Farmer’s Carry and Other Acts of Suburban Defiance

    Last night I had dinner at The Kebab Shop with an old friend—a former boxing champion turned engineer, the kind of guy who looks like he could build a bridge in the morning and break your nose that afternoon, all while discussing Tolstoy.

    He recently broke up with his girlfriend and confessed something strange and honest:

    “I feel like I’m chasing the sad,” he said. “Just so I’ll feel better about myself.”

    I told him not to worry—he’s sad, alright. Sometimes pain is too large to register. Like being so exhausted you can’t fall asleep, or so depleted you can’t even feel tired.
    He nodded, then casually dropped the bomb: he just bought a Lexus. I assumed an SUV—some respectable adult-mobile with storage. Nope. He turned his phone toward me and grinned. It was an obsidian black Lexus RC350 coupe, a low-slung, 311-horsepower statement of rebellion against mediocrity and middle age. Price tag? A cool $70,000.

    Why? Because he gets bored. Easily. He’s cursed with a mind that needs friction. His current job is too easy, and when things get too easy, life feels mechanical. He’s planning to move on—to another job, another city, more challenge, more money, more meaning.
    He told me staying home to watch TV feels like soul rot. So instead, he journals (in a real book, with prompts—who knew that was a thing?), plays soccer on weekends, and takes private dance lessons. Yes, dance. This man has better time management than most monasteries.

    I told him I admire him. I mean it. He’s not surrendering to entropy; he’s interrogating it with pen, ball, and motion. He’s writing his way out of the void. I might need to follow his lead when I retire in two years. No matter our age, we either rage our fists at mortality or we start sinking into the upholstery.

    I then told my friend that I nearly bought a $2,000 recliner last week. A magnificent beast of engineered comfort. But the moment I imagined myself melting into it, day after day, I envisioned not rest—but early burial. A leather sarcophagus with cupholders. I backed away like it was a cursed object.

    I was inspired by my friend’s hunger for adventure, so the next morning I punished myself with a new exercise: the Farmer’s Carry–two kettlebells, one in each hand, pacing in circles across my front lawn like a rogue warlord in gym shorts. Neighbors peeked through their blinds to watch this 63-year-old Larry Csonka doppelgänger lumbering across the grass like I was either training for something… or losing a very public battle with aging.

    The exercise nearly broke me. I’ll keep it in rotation, but with moderation. I train to feel alive, not to hemorrhage my last remaining Life Force into the turf of suburban California.

    And now, I wait for my friend to pull up and take me for a ride in his Lexus. He’s earned it. The man’s been driving the same Corolla for thirteen years. Now it’s his turn to live a little. And me? I’ll tag along, a passenger for a while, enjoying the ride through this strange, accelerating cycle of life.

  • The Ascent of Paper Towel Man

    The Ascent of Paper Towel Man

    Last night, my subconscious staged a farce: I was back on my old college campus, nervously ordering textbooks for my freshman comp classes—because that’s how my brain parties at night. After hours in the academic underworld of ISBNs and course numbers, I stumbled home under a moonless sky only to be seized by a grim realization: I forgot to order a crucial book.

    Panic.

    In this emergency, I reached not for Xanax, but a dark green landline phone, the color of envy or perhaps bureaucratic despair. I called the English Chair. Except in dream logic, the English Chair was not the overworked academic I know—but Scott Galloway, the sarcastic podcaster and economics professor. 

    I told him he had to submit the textbook order by midnight.

    True to form, he lobbed verbal grenades at me. Taunts, jabs, snide remarks. His voice had that tone—the kind that leaves you wondering if you’re being insulted or inducted into a secret society of useful idiots.

    I said, “Don’t joke over the phone. Only mock me in person.”

    He replied, “Fine. Come over. I’m having a dinner party.”

    Naturally.

    So, in the witching hour, I opened my front door—expecting a miles-long slog up a mountain—and instead, in the way only dreams and luxury real estate can allow, I was already at Casa Galloway, perched perilously on stilts over a cliff like some Bond villain’s hideout with a podcast studio.

    He was charming in person—gregarious, warm, practically glowing with hospitality. He led me into a dimly lit dining room where guests laughed and angel hair pasta sat arranged like delicate tumbleweeds on silver trays. White sauce shimmered like divine lubrication.

    “Take as much as you like,” he said, arms open.

    I hesitated. Did he make enough? Should I pretend restraint for the optics? Was this a test of my caloric discipline?

    I took a tiny, tragic portion.

    He raised an eyebrow. I mumbled something about “leaving enough for everyone,” which seemed to impress him. He praised my selflessness, as if I’d just refused seconds at a famine relief banquet.

    After eating my guilt-ridden noodle clump and participating in some effervescent dinner chatter, I left and returned home to my modest flat at the bottom of the hill. But before I could nestle into my bed of neuroses, it hit me: Galloway might be short on paper towels after his soirée.

    And I had a Costco-sized case.

    I threw the rolls under my arm and charged up the mountain like a sentient Amazon Prime delivery. My quads flexed with purpose. I was the Paper Towel Man, delivering absorbency and justice. I swung the rolls from hand to hand like batons of competence.

    I found him on the front porch—a cliffside slab barely larger than a yoga mat, with a waterfall crashing nearby like some sort of capitalist Shangri-La.

    “I’ve brought reinforcements,” I said, brandishing the paper towels like sacred scrolls.

    He smiled, then warned me: “The last fifty feet are treacherous.”

    Of course they were. The final ascent required mountaineering skills I didn’t have—jagged rocks, sudden drops, the kind of climb you’d expect in a spiritual thriller set in Tibet.

    But I was determined. Galloway had ordered my textbook and served me pasta. Reciprocity was sacred. I would reach that porch if it killed me.

    And then I woke up. Standing in my kitchen. Brewing coffee. Scribbling this fever dream into a notebook, trying to decide if it meant anything—or just meant I shouldn’t eat carbs after 9 p.m.

  • Too Good to Sip: My Toxic Romance with Coffee

    Too Good to Sip: My Toxic Romance with Coffee

    I should probably quit drinking coffee—not because it’s bad for me, but because it’s too good, like a lover who ruins you for everyone else.

    This revelation smacked me in the face after a visit to my in-laws in Prescott Valley. There, in the quiet altitude of Arizona suburbia, I encountered coffee nirvana via a Ninja coffee maker—a machine that makes my Keurig taste like it was brewed through a gym sock. The Ninja’s brew was hotter, stronger, bolder. It had the depth of a Russian novel and the intensity of a Quentin Tarantino monologue. I immediately bought one for myself, eager to elevate my mornings into spiritual events. And elevate them I did—too far.

    Now my life has become tragically front-loaded. The coffee is too exquisite. It’s an overachiever. Nothing that follows—emails, errands, workouts, social obligations—can match its rich, scalding glory. My day peaks at 7:12 a.m., and everything after is a slow descent into lukewarm mediocrity. My existence has become a parade of yawns between two cups of perfection.

    This isn’t living. It’s a caffeine cult. And I’m the high priest.

    So what am I to do? Only one solution remains: renounce coffee. Banish the beans. Crawl out of this roasted rut and reinvent myself as a man unshackled from the tyranny of joy. I will become someone who experiences life itself—not just life plus Arabica.

    Or so I’d like to believe. Because deep down, I know I’ll just replace one ritual with another. Like that British expat novelist who lives in Tunisia, the one with the butler who brings him tea and a giant slab of cake every afternoon. That’ll be me. Earl Grey at four, carrot cake on Monday, German chocolate on Tuesday, and so on. I’ll swap a vice, rename it “ritual,” and carry on.

    Coffee may be gone, but the cravings will simply find new costumes.

  • The Gospel of Iron: How Weightlifting Became My Religion

    The Gospel of Iron: How Weightlifting Became My Religion

    In 1974, at the age of thirteen, I began weightlifting under the guidance of Lou Kruk, my junior high P.E. teacher and Junior Olympic weightlifting coach. Lou wasn’t just teaching kids to hoist iron—he was shaping futures. He handed me a barbell and lit the fuse. Soon, I was consuming protein powders and flipping through Strength & Health and Muscle Builder, the gospel according to Bob Hoffman and Joe Weider.

    From garage gyms to commercial ones, from clunky bench presses to rusted barbells, I trained. I flirted briefly with gimmicks—a Bullworker here, a Power Yoga phase there—but nothing kept me grounded like the iron. Eventually, I found kettlebells: odd, compact, brutally effective. And fifty-one years later, I’m still at it. The protein, the lifting—they’re no longer habits; they’re rituals.

    I don’t work out to chase aesthetics or to stave off decay. I train because not training feels like suffocating. My routine gives shape to my days, the way grammar gives shape to language. Without it, life would collapse into chaos. I marvel at those who drift through their hours without structure, snacking at whim, binge-watching shows, darting between texts and chores like pinballs. A life without scaffolding feels not just unsatisfying—it feels dangerous.

    Sometimes I wonder: what if I’d never met Lou Kruk? What if weightlifting had never entered my life? Would I have found some other sacred structure to cling to, or would I have been swallowed by drift? Yes, I play piano. Yes, I write. But I’m no professional writer unless you count me as a “professional navel-gazer.” These activities are merely sidelines—dilettante pursuits. It’s the iron that makes me whole.

    Maybe weightlifting saved my life. Maybe it still does. I could psychoanalyze this, wax poetic about addiction to ritual and the fear of entropy. Or I could walk into the garage, chalk my hands, and get lost in goblet squats and Turkish Get-Ups until the world makes sense again. I think you already know what I’m going to choose.

  • Watch Ownership Is a Letdown; Research Is the High

    Watch Ownership Is a Letdown; Research Is the High

    One of my favorite pastimes is watching YouTube comparison videos of the Toyota Camry vs. the Honda Accord. I’m not shopping for a car. I don’t need a car. I may never buy another car. 

    But these videos? They soothe the savage beast inside of me. They go down like a smooth bourbon, with notes of ABS braking and a smoky finish of fuel economy.

    While others go to YouTube to meditate or do yoga, I fall into the hypnotic cadence of two grown men comparing rear-seat legroom and infotainment systems with the solemnity of Cold War negotiators. 

    I’m riveted. Parsing the pros and cons of these two sedans gives me a focus so intense it borders on religious ecstasy. I study engine specs like they’re verses from Leviticus. My concentration sharpens, my anxiety fades. I am, for a brief and blissful moment, free.

    And then it hits me: I don’t want the car. I want the focus. The Camry and Accord are just placeholders in the temple of obsession.

    This revelation sheds light on my watch obsession. It helps me realize that acquiring a watch in most cases is a bitter letdown. A $3,000 watch on the wrist is like a Tinder date at Denny’s: out of place and super embarrassing. 

    I’ve worn $5,000 watches while taking my daughters to YogurtLand and I’ve said to myself, “Dude, you’ve lost the plot.”

    How did I get here with expensive watches that I wear when I’m buying pretzels and diet soda at Target?

    And then I realize. The same drive to focus on Camry-Accord comparisons is the same drive that makes me do “timepiece research.”  Watching my fellow timepiece obsessives drool over bezels and lume shots is the real high. That’s what lights me up. That’s what gets the adrenaline surging through my veins. 

    I’ve spent years confusing consumer acquisition with personal transformation. Getting this thing or that thing will change me inside. I want to be courageous, dignified, courteous, disciplined, fit, and healthy. A watch can’t redeem me. It can’t make me whole. It can’t make me the person I wish I were. Not once have I ever put a new watch on my wrist, gave my wife a wrist shot, and said, “Look, honey, I’ve achieved a metamorphosis.”

    She’ll just look at me and say, “Dude, clean the leaves out of the rain gutters.”

    The material thing in my hands is a letdown because what I really want is the chase and the intense focus. The glorious plunge down a rabbit hole lined with brushed stainless steel and leather-wrapped dashboards. My consumerism isn’t about consumption—it’s about cultivating a state of intense obsession that drowns out the shrieking absurdity of modern life.

    So no more mistaking adrenaline for fulfillment. No more clicking “Buy Now” hoping for transcendence in a shipping box. 

    I’ll keep researching. That’s my Prozac. That’s my monastery. 

    But buying something has proven to be a fool’s errand. And if doing so-called research inflames my consumer appetites, then I should probably put my foot on the brakes when it comes to the research because it can be a prelude to making a purchase I don’t want to make.

    Let me give you an analogy. Let’s say you’re back in high school and you’re at the high school dance, but your girlfriend isn’t there because she’s on a ski trip. While bored at the dance, your ex shows up. She looks more beautiful than you remember her. She approaches you and asks you to dance. “Nothing will happen,” she says. “It will be completely innocent.” You dance with her and something happens. 

    That’s what watch research is like. You tell yourself the research is innocent. You’re just reading forums. Watching a video or two. Maybe checking inventory. 

    But then you wake up and you’re shopping at Target with a $5,000 watch on your wrist and you feel both embarrassed and ashamed.

    Doing research on watches is like having that dance with your ex-girlfriend: Something is going to happen. And it’s not going to be pretty. 

    Have a wonderful day, everyone. Don’t forget to smash that Like button of your soul.

  • Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act

    Why Reading Is the Last Romantic Act


    If you take my Critical Thinking class, let me set expectations up front: I will not stand at the front of the room and lecture you into becoming an intellectual. That’s not how it works. I can’t command you to read. I can’t install curiosity like a software update.

    What I can tell you is this: the default setting is mediocrity. It’s smooth, seductive, and socially acceptable. The world—especially its algorithmic avatars—is built to exploit that setting. Platforms like OpenAI don’t just offer tools; they offer excuses. They whisper: You don’t have to think. Just prompt.

    You’ll get by on it. You’ll write tolerable essays. You might even land a job—something stable and fluorescent-lit with a breakroom fridge. But if you keep outsourcing your critical thinking to machines and your inner life to streaming platforms, you may slowly congeal into a Non-Player Character: a functionally adequate adult with no self-agency, just dopamine hits from cheap tech and cheaper opinions.

    The world needs thinkers, not task-completers.

    And that’s why I push reading—not as an obligation, but as a doorway to a higher mode of existence. Reading changes the texture of your thoughts. It exposes you to complexity you didn’t ask for and patterns of mind you didn’t inherit. But here’s the inconvenient truth: no one can make you read.

    Reading isn’t a commandment. It’s a love affair—and like any love worth having, it’s irrational, wild, and self-chosen. You don’t read because it’s good for you. You read because at some point a book wrecked you—in the best way possible. It made your brain itch, or your chest tighten, or your worldview crack open like an old floorboard.

    And that’s what I want for you. Not because it makes me feel like a good professor, but because if you don’t fall in love with ideas—on the page, in the margins, in someone else’s wild, flawed sentences—you’ll live a life someone else designed for you.

    And you’ll call it freedom.

  • The Last Tick: Breaking Up with My Watch Addiction

    The Last Tick: Breaking Up with My Watch Addiction

    Chapter 7 from The Timepiece Whisperer

    It struck me as odd—how unmoved I was by the Watch Master’s death. No sadness, no shock. Just a dry acceptance, like hearing the mail didn’t arrive. The man was in his late seventies, had chain-smoked his way through the golden age of studio recording, and looked like he’d been exhaling Marlboro ghosts for decades. Of course he died. It was inevitable, like quartz battery failure.

    And yet… I felt I should have felt more. But I was too deep in my own wrist-bound psychodrama. I wasn’t mourning a mentor—I was clawing for freedom from the slow, obsessive spiral of watch addiction. The Watch Master had passed the baton, and in his place stood a new sherpa on my horological hell-hike: Josh, the so-called Timepiece Whisperer.

    The next evening, Josh opened the door with a look that said get ready to be offended gently.

    “Bad news,” he said.

    I followed him into the kitchen. Same table. Same tension. He poured me a mug of mint tea, then hit me with it:

    “You want to add the Seiko Astron. I’ve thought about it. The answer is no. Absolutely not. You’re done. No more watches. Not now, not ever.”

    I blinked. “That’s… a bit harsh.”

    Josh didn’t blink. “It’s the truth. One more blue-dial beauty will not complete your collection—it’ll fracture it. You don’t wear formalwear. You don’t attend black-tie galas. That Astron won’t elevate your life—it’ll mock it. You’ll feel guilty for not wearing your other watches, they’ll collect dust and resentment, and you’ll spiral again. The result? Misery.”

    I looked at the floor. I already knew this. I’d said the same things to myself, in a dozen internal arguments that always ended with but maybe just one more…

    “You needed to hear it from someone else,” Josh said.

    “I hate myself for being so weak. I should have handled this alone.”

    He shrugged. “That’s what I’m here for. Left to your own devices, you’d still be googling ‘best summer watches for men over 60.’ I saved you a year of torment in two days. You’re welcome.”

    Then he pulled out a sugar cube shaped like a butterfly—absurdly whimsical for such a hardline intervention—and dropped it into my tea.

    “Close your eyes. Make a wish. Drink it down.”

    I did as instructed. The mint tea was scalding and sweet.

    He asked, “What did you wish for?”

    “That I be free from this watch-collecting hellhole and never go back.”

    He nodded. “Excellent wish.”

    I never saw Josh again.
    And I never bought another watch.

  • Vacation Nihilism: The Existential Price of That $28 Margarita

    Vacation Nihilism: The Existential Price of That $28 Margarita

    Vacation nihilism is the uniquely modern despair that creeps in when you’re supposed to be relaxing. You’re sprawled on a rental bed, digesting overpriced novelty food, staring at the ceiling fan, and asking yourself: What am I even doing with my life? The break from your daily routine doesn’t recharge you—it exposes you. With your rituals on hold, your ambitions start to look ridiculous, your projects meaningless, and your belief in humanity’s forward march into reason and tech-fueled glory? Laughable.

    You’re not wrong, entirely. The world has gone a bit mad. But your despair isn’t just philosophical—it’s biochemical. You’ve sabotaged your sleep schedule. You’ve eaten five experimental meals in three days and haven’t seen a vegetable since the airport salad bar. Your gut is staging a coup. You’re bloated, irritable, and haven’t had ten consecutive minutes alone since the trip began. Naturally, you begin to suspect your entire existence is a long-running joke with no punchline.

    Then comes the knock: Nihilism, that smug little parasite, invites himself in. And you’re too tired to fight him off. He plops down beside you and begins dismantling your life, piece by piece: your goals, your routines, your little morning affirmations—all reduced to performance art for an indifferent universe.

    For most people, this existential fog lifts after a few days back in the saddle. The routine reboots. Coffee tastes like salvation again. But not always. Sometimes you bring it back with you, like a psychological bedbug infestation. Tiny, persistent thoughts that burrow into your habits. Questions you can’t un-ask. You might look the same on the outside, but internally, the scaffolding is rusting.

    You went on vacation to unwind. Instead, you came back with nihilism spores. And no, TSA does not screen for them.

  • The Watch Hoarder’s Purge

    The Watch Hoarder’s Purge

    Chapter Five from The Watch Whisperer of Redondo Beach

    “You look miserable,” the Watch Master said, peering into the void of his backyard as we sat beneath a star-punched sky.

    “You can see me? It’s pitch black out here.”

    “I don’t need to see you. I can feel the gravitational pull of your despair. You’re radiating existential dread.”

    “That’s because you’ve assigned me an impossible task. Sell all my watches… and keep only one.”

    “Baby steps, Cassandra.”

    At that moment, a neighbor’s cat slinked in like a ghost, coiled around the Master’s ankle, and began purring like a smug little engine. He ignored it entirely.

    “You need to begin The Purge.”

    “The Purge? You mean like that movie where people commit murder once a year?”

    “No, not that kind of purge. Though honestly, your collection could use a bloodletting. I’m talking about the soul-cleansing purge. A lifestyle exfoliation. You can’t amputate your horological addiction in one go. You’ve got to build momentum. Start with the dead weight in your life.”

    He took a slow sip from a chipped mug of lukewarm coffee and gently nudged the cat away with the practiced detachment of a man who has done this a hundred times.

    “Begin,” he said, “with your eWaste.”

    “My what?”

    “You heard me. Don’t pretend you’re not hoarding defunct electronics like some midlife tech raccoon. Old flat-screens, fossilized laptops, bargain-bin Bluetooth speakers, cracked tablets, prehistoric printers, derelict keyboards—stuff that died during the Bush administration.”

    “I have… some things,” I admitted, blood draining from my face.

    “Take it all to an eWaste center. Feel the rush. The purity. Like dominoes tipping, you’ll get hooked on getting rid of things. And before long, those watches will start looking like ankle weights chained to your past.”

    A wave of dizziness came over me.

    The Master raised an eyebrow. “What now?”

    “Everything you’re saying is true. And I think I’m going to faint.”

    He shrugged with the lazy grace of a man who’d long since graduated from giving a damn. “Change or don’t. Nobody’s twisting your arm. But if you’re still clutching that broken Casio from 2009 like it’s a family heirloom, maybe it’s time to rethink your priorities.”

    He stretched his limbs and let out an operatic yawn. Just then, a massive crow descended on the fence post, tilted its head like a Greek oracle, and let out a guttural, gravelly call: “Puuurge. Puuurge. Puuurge.”

    The Master didn’t flinch. He simply glanced at the bird and muttered, “Everyone wants a line in this story.”

    And with that, he dismissed me into the night—to wrestle with my demons and the unbearable burden of excess.