There is a particular kind of madness that only watch people understand. It starts innocently: a glance at a dial or caseback, a rabbit hole on a forum at midnight, the quiet obsession with the way a seconds hand sweeps, escapement ticks and complications reveal themselves. For me, it started with my grandmother’s art-deco jewellery watch, my grandfather’s automatic and it ended up as a website. And then, for a while, it became my entire life.
I don’t really know when it stopped being fun.
That’s the uncomfortable truth. Because it was fun. In the beginning, it was only that. Reading about watches, late nights on YouTube, curiosity on every boutique window, that quiet obsession that doesn’t ask for permission. I built Watch I Love out of that feeling. No experience, no plan, no expectations, absolutely clueless in what technical difficulties in having such a platform meant. Just the need to write, to share, to connect with people who understood why a small mechanical object could matter so much. Could create such an addiction…
And then it grew.
Faster than I was ready for. Faster than I could process. At some point, there were more than 140,000 of you reading every month. I still don’t fully understand that number. Brands started noticing. My name started circulating in rooms I had no business being in, and yet, there I was. It felt good. Of course it did. It felt like validation, like proof that this thing I loved had a place, that I had a place. I mattered…
And maybe that’s where things started to shift. What nobody tells you about passion projects is how easily they stop being passion and start being pressure.
Because I already had a job. A real one. Engineer, 9-to-5, responsibilities, pressure. But that wasn’t enough anymore. Someone once told me, almost jokingly: “You have your job 9-to-5 and your Watch I Love 5-to-9.” They were wrong. It was 5-to-2. Nights, weekends, holidays… it didn’t stop. I didn’t stop.
I was always writing, always publishing, always chasing relevance. And I told myself it was passion. It wasn’t. Not anymore. It was compulsion. It was obsession.
The burnout didn’t come quietly. It hit hard. Hard enough to scare me. Hard enough to make promises to myself that, at the time, I meant with everything I had: slow down, protect your health, only do what you love. Keep it a hobby. Keep it yours.
Diana told me the same thing, again and again, in her calm, patient way: “Don’t forget, it’s a hobby. You’re supposed to have fun.” I heard her. I didn’t listen.
Because somewhere along the way, I got afraid. Afraid of disappearing. Afraid of not being invited. Afraid of not being “on the list.” And when it happened, when I was left out (because it happened and it stung), it didn’t push me away. It pulled me deeper in. I thought: fine, I’ll work harder. I’ll publish more. I’ll be everywhere. I’ll make it impossible to ignore me.
So I did… I published. And published. And published… Not because I had something to say, but because I didn’t want to be forgotten. I started writing things I didn’t care so much about. Rewriting press releases. Chasing relevance like it was something you could hold onto if you just ran fast enough. Just the 10 o’clock (later 10:10 for the reminder of famous 10 of October – I hope you know it is the World Watch Day) article, since consistency is the key to keep algorithms happy.
And the irony is brutal: the more I did that, the worse everything became. The quality dropped. The numbers dropped. My energy disappeared. My patience disappeared. Even the joy, the reason this existed, disappeared.
And still, I kept going. Because I thought I could compete. With teams. With budgets. With people who do this as their only job. I convinced myself that if I just pushed a little harder, sacrificed a little more, ignored a few more warning signs… I could somehow keep up. That I can win a race that I was not suppose to be in. That’s not ambition. That’s stubbornness. That’s pure FOMO and it has nothing to do with conscious, rational thinking.
This year made everything louder. The uncertainty, the pressure, the fear. Not just about the site, but about life, work, stability. It all mixed together into something heavy and constant. And one evening… I was done. Not in a dramatic way. Just tired. Empty. I was ready to delete everything.
Not pause. Not step back. Delete.
Years of work, gone in one decision.
Diana stopped me.
And for a brief moment, I saw things clearly again. This was never supposed to be this. It was never supposed to feel like this. But clarity is fragile. Because I slipped back into it. The same patterns. The same fear of missing out. The same quiet voice saying: “just one more article, just stay relevant, just don’t fall behind the 10 o’clock schedule – the algorithms will punish you…” Again!
So I’m saying this out loud now, because I need to hear it as much as anyone else: I’m done competing.
Watch I Love is not ending. But that version of it, the anxious, chasing, always-on version, is over. I’m going back to what this was supposed to be. Writing about what I love. When I have something to say. Without looking at numbers. Without thinking about who might invite me or who might forget me.
Yes, I might lose things. Invitations. Access. Maybe even whatever “position” I had built in this world, my spot at Watches & Wonders. I might even lose my place in the Academy. That’s real. These are real losses, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
But what I’ve already lost is more important: Peace. Time. Honesty with myself (this kicks harder than expected)…
And I want that back. The passion, the joy…
To the people who stayed, who read, who supported, who never cared about traffic numbers or brand lists – you matter more than all of that. You always did. I just lost sight of it for a while. For those of you who shared words of wisdom and helped me along my journey, including you my dear Diana, I was addicted to something I cannot even quantify. I want to do better than that…
And to the brands… if I write about you, it will be because I mean it. Nothing more, nothing less. I never wrote about a watch I didn’t like or didn’t believe in. But I cannot unrealistically compete.
I think that’s enough.
It has to be.