this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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It might be one of those "you had to have been there" moments. It's 2014, Obama was reelected, Uptown Funk was on the radio (there used to be this thing called FM radio), and there you are - a happy young thing reading texts on your watch in broad daylight, right the middle of a conversation. You felt like a cucumber straight from the freezer.
I know all that sounds slightly laughable now, but there is an undeniable yearning for that zeitgeist compared to where we ended up.
I never had one (but did want one, just financially couldn't justify it at the time), but it would have a great fit for me. I just wanted a watch to tell the time, and display my phone notifications plus vibrate to alert me to them. That would have been legitimately useful for the job I was in at the time which was challenging to carry a phone (but it was nearby in my bag).
Now, I have no use for any of that. But I am now interested in a heart rate monitor that doesn't hoover my data to replace my old dedicated Polar heart rate monitor (which also told the time, but I only wore it exercising), so the more expensive model is tempting!
After Pebble got bought up and went under, I kept mine a good while. It eventually died or I lost the charger, I forget. I've had 'modern' smart watches since then, and they all just stressed me out and were too fiddly. I need buttons.
I'm not really interested in tracking calories burned or heart rate changes myself, so I preordered a cheap one in black like I used to have. Annoying that I'll probably have to pay an extra import duty on it, but I miss wearing a watch and this one is worth supporting - for the thing itself, but also because it's a meaningful story to me.