When we started Watch Ya Gonna Do About It, a place where we would go on to share honest features about the world of watches, we looked forward to celebrating milestones and anniversaries.
But lots has happened in our little world, and the universe since then. Celebrating is not really a word we are looking at anymore. Marking would be a better one.
Coincidentally, we started writing about watches when the world was first getting cautious about the whole pandemic concept. Smoke had just begun to clear from one of the worst bush fires in Australian history. Millions hadn’t sadly succumbed to the tyranny of the virus just as yet. Migration crises hadn’t tested friendships. The wailing cries of even more hungry bellies hadn’t fallen on the deaf ears of food shortages. Small businesses hadn’t seen doors brought shut on their bread-n-butter. The human crisis in Afghanistan hadn’t reared its ugly head. Hurricanes in US and volcanoes in Tonga hadn’t made humans feel insignificant and almost powerless.
On the watches front, the industry we are in, brands hadn’t yet shut production for the first time since the manufacturing of time itself. People in hordes weren’t laid off, businesses weren’t shut.
On a personal front, both the two of us hadn’t had a couple of health setbacks we have had.
The concept of time is a strange one. It goes fast for some, slow for others. It’s good for some, and bad for others. On one hand it can feel like eternity, and on the other, feel like we are still within the clutches of a moment in time that apparently did pass us by, but we somehow didn’t quite feel it.
As we begin to write this ode to watches, the sky is overcast here in Sydney. It’s been for a good 10 or so days now. Unrelenting rain incessantly pours, drenching all that it surveys. The furrowed brows of clouds stare down upon us, hiding any glimpse of sun’s rays that might heal the wet earth. In some parts, this torrential outpour of nature’s wrath has disrupted lives, and in some even taken lives. While some parts of Australia seek cover, the other like WA are grappling with the rage of a sudden Covid outbreak.
Look beyond home, and the global news is soaked in another kind of downpour; this time soaked in blood. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is both alarming and disturbing.
The scars of today run deep, gashing at the very existence of our beings, and powerful enough to potentially wash away any legacy we might wish to leave for our children.
In moments like this, when time begins to lose all meaning, any ray of hope is welcome. You even more so notice and salute the brave and heroic acts of those men and women who help and assist their fellow men and women.
Good moments in time must be treasured, not at the expense of anyone else or in negligence of the world around us, but maybe even just as a form of distraction. If something can provide relief, albeit even a momentary distraction, it should be welcomed with open arms.
Anything that is a positive distraction is then not trivial. Everyone needs an escape.
Time, then, also holds key to a better tomorrow. It gives hope. Time heals like no other force can.
For us, working away non-stop covering watches has been the antidote to pain; we realise it may not directly help anyone else, but at least for us personally, it has been the much needed escape from the harsh realities of life, into a world that takes the mind away from dystopia.
We at WYGDAI realise that nothing can equate the perils of those who are affected by natural elements such as the current Aussie rains or the virus, or those whose very existence is in question by man-made elements such as the turmoil going on in Europe.
True, watches, and luxury in general, are not even remotely of any worth in comparison to what’s going on it the world.
But in the past two years, working with watches, has been somewhat therapeutic. It’s taken the mind away, even if for fleeting seconds, to a mini-universe of horology that’s intricate, complicated, and beautiful.
The beauty about watches is that they manufacture time. We don’t produce or sell watches at Watch Ya Gonna Do About It. But talking about them has been a blessing in disguise.
It has been two years since we started on our journey of discovering and sharing watches. So on our 2nd anniversary, we wish to say thank you to watches – objects that have provided us with momentary pauses from our mind spinning out of control. They have provided comfort.
So whatever your comfort food for soul may be, hang on to it.
Here’s to many more years of Watch Ya Gonna Do About It, and hopefully where time is not so cruel.
Here’s to having some semblance of peace and happiness in the world so that we can celebrate our third anniversary next year, rather than marking it again.
Here’s to watches and the calming power they have had on us personally.
Here’s to the tick-tock, tick-tock of regulated movements and comforted hearts beating in sync.
Here’s to time healing.
Salut.
Jacqui and Joseph, Founders, Watch Ya Gonna Do About It
