Latest Review
Just over a year and a half ago, I began writing for Worn & Wound. According to my author’s page, that has amassed a total of 14 pages worth of content – totalling, by my best estimation, around 110 articles I have done for the site. It’s hard to believe that I have that sort of library to look back upon. This is mostly due to the fact that, in June of 2023, I would have told you I didn’t know a damn thing about watches.
Just a short eighteen months ago, if you would have asked me what a tourbillon was, I would have answered a fish that pairs well with citrus. Other than thinking of a watch as an accessory, I never gave them much thought – let alone the entire industry. I think, if you were to read back on those early articles, you could see this. I was, at best, timid – afraid to offend a brand or the Worn & Wound community. And, at worst, I was a fraud. And sidling in between those two poles of my own self-doubt, I would sit at my desk to parse a press release and convey whatever information I could gather to you, the reader, in the hope that you would believe in me as a watch writer.
It wasn’t until this last year that that began to change. Practice makes perfect, they say, and I think if you do anything long enough you can get a handle on it. For me, the shift came when I stopped writing about what I thought readers would want to know and actually began paying attention to the market, and by extension the community, at large. I began to think of the watch industry as less of a monolith and more of a population and, in doing so, I allowed myself to be a bit freer in my writing.
You can see this throughout 2024, a marked change where the stiffness of my work made way for a more conversational sense of humor. Instead of telling you that the case was steel and the straps were leather, I’d much rather tell you about my high school dance or call myself an idiot. In this way, I hope I have not only made you laugh, but have presented the information in a way that, I hope, is a bit more memorable than the boilerplate press releases we’re all accustomed to.
In doing so, this sort of irreverent voice I’ve given some of my articles isn’t just to make you laugh – but to make you think about watches in a new way. The beauty of Worn & Wound is that we meet the watch enthusiast at every level of one’s personal journey with horology. My goal this year hasn’t been to just rattle off specifics (though, of course, this is important), but to invite readers into the big-tent approach of Worn & Wound, where you can be yourself, learn a little, and not lose the fact that the watch world isn’t so stuffy and can, in fact, be a hell of a lot of fun.
