I am wildly fascinated with humanity’s study, measure, and management of time.  This is my long way of saying horology is cool as fuck, and I want to start the first part of this love letter (of sorts) with a very brief history on how we have told time.

The concept of telling time goes as far back to our first several rounds of ancestors.  Without a clock, we simply just look up at the sun and note a general idea of the time of day.  If without clouds, a rising sun meant morning, the sun somewhere at its highest point is noon time, and a setting sun signified that evening was approaching.  By nightfall we’re told one thing: rest until you see the sun rise again for a new day.  It’s not by any means a technological method of telling time, but it served as good enough for a few thousand years.

Then came the sundial – the first true device for timekeeping that eventually led to the modern analog clock face  – which still utilizes the sun but this time giving sunlight a pointer to cast a shadow on a surface.  Still, it’s rendered useless on days when clouds are present and at night where sun is nowhere to be found.

Then there’s the development of the hourglass, which measures the passage of time by the fall of a fine substance, usually sand, using the pull of gravity.  While I would not bet the farm on its accuracy, it’s quite aesthetically pleasing to the eye to watch the sand travel from one glass bulb to the next through its tiny canal.

Then came the origin of the first mechanical clock, which looks to be debatable with one side of historians believing that it was first developed and used by medieval Chinese, and another side arguing that mechanical clocks first appeared as clock towers during the Renaissance period in parts of Europe.  Who gets true credit is neither here nor there for me, but I will admit that I am wrong to believe that the first clock tower was built in Hill Valley in 1885, later to be struck by lightning in 1955.  Zemeckis had me roped in on that belief since 1990.

Let’s fast forward about five to six hundred something years.  Advances in timekeeping lead to the modern wristwatch in the 1800s, and there are now thousands of watchmakers worldwide.  I wrapped my first “real” watch around my left wrist sixteen years ago.  And just within the last ten years, one watch became two, two became four, four became eight, and eight became… I have literally lost count. I feel great fortune that my wife has not (yet) called me out on spending too much money on timepieces. With that being said, let’s just say I’m prepared for her smoke when I come home with a Naoya Hida.

So, what does this all mean?  Am I just a collector of watches burning money?

I assure you that probably tells five to ten percent of the story, and my love for time goes far beyond than what I wear around my wrist.

I love exploring time in non-linear and philosophical and physical frameworks, like time as the fourth dimension, or the flow of time not being uniform under different conditions.  I love attempting to explain to my wife the concepts of time cycles and time loops where the idea of time travel may be possible, wholly disputing the traditional take of time as linear.  I often don’t get that far since she falls asleep a few minutes in, and I end up just talking to myself.

It’s fine, everything is fine.  Except –

And here lies the catch, when I look at time as linear – that today eventually becomes yesterday, and tomorrow is the future – there’s far more fear there for me than love.

I’m afraid of running out of time, so much so that I’m literally trying to buy it.

If there is one thing that I have leveled up in skill in the last decade, it’s holding up the mirror to myself to truthfully admit my flaws.  I even make it a game to find them before my wife calls me out on my shit.  So if I don’t count clowns gazing sexually at me through my bedroom window at night, running out of time is my biggest fear, with the line going damn near full vertical on the graph.  And, I can tell you exactly when this inflection point is: July 7, 2024.

The day my daughter was born.

A quick look and study shows that as of 2025/2026 the median age of first-time fathers is thirty-one.  That puts me ten less autumn seasons I will get to spend with my daughter versus the average.  With a whole lot of luck, I might get to spend a total of forty healthy autumns with my girl, God willing far more than that.  Using envy and more so anger, I can still out-lift and out-train all the still-in-their-physical-prime-twenty-somethings at my gym because I want to be able to carry my daughter, whether or not she wants to be carried, until she’s thirty.  I know she’ll eventually prefer to hang out with friends more than she’ll want to hang out with me.  One day, she’ll just ask for less reading time, less park time, less ice cream, less hugs, less cuddles, and less kisses.

And that’s why I am going to become the fucking Airwolf of helicopter dads.  But, in a good, cool-dad way where she won’t resent me, I swear.  I don’t know how, because I’m not there yet.  Let me figure that out in time.  Maybe I’ll write a book about it when I do.

I know.  I know!  I’m probably overreacting.  She hasn’t even turned two yet for fuck’s sake.  There’s a lot more autumns left before I have to worry about any of this.  I just know that when it happens, it’ll feel like a blink of an eye ago.  I’m going to feel the vast weight of that emotion and likely cry about it.  I’ll be much grayer then, with a hairline running higher and a healthy collection of finer lines on my face.

But, when that day comes, I’ll be wearing my Grand Seiko SBGE271, and yes – still hoping that time travel is possible (and putting my wife to sleep talking about it) just so I can go back and hold my little girl as I do now, but goddamn proud that I chose to be Airwolf.