What time is it where you are?

Sometimes the greatest joys in life are hidden in the smallest rituals. Like waking up groggy an hour from landing on a red-eye, still cocooned in Airplane Mode. In that brief window of peaceful disconnection, I reach for my watch, twist the crown, and set the time to my destination. A quiet signal of I’ve arrived. In a way my watch is the beginning and end of everything when I travel.

Even before the journey starts, there’s the ceremonial packing of a watch roll. Three days on a boat? Bring the Diver. A dressy dinner with friends? The teeny jeweled LeCoultre. Casual hangs?

The Seiko I bought in Dubai. I always feel like I need to add that location detail when I talk about my Seiko – it was the first time I purchased a watch on a whim to commemorate a trip so it’s always the Dubai Seiko. Non-watch people wouldn’t consider pairing a timepiece to an activity so you know exactly what kind of person I am by this approach, but what I love is that each choice is an anticipation of the moments to come – a way of curating time and place.

This makes me recall a conversation I had with Pharrell a few years ago at the Brooklyn Museum. We talked about collecting, and he said it wasn’t enough to buy things and leave them boxed – you have to wear them, live with them, and let them be part of the human experience. I think about that so often because I used to be so precious about utility. I’d save the bottle of wine I had shipped from Castello di Poppiano for the “right” occasion with the “right” person, or hold back a watch until the outing seemed worthy, in order to reduce its wear.

But more often than not, the wine spoiled, the watch lost time, or the moment never arrived. What I’ve come to realize is that every day and every trip can hold the weight of celebration if you allow it. A watch worn and weathered through travel becomes part of that ongoing love story and living exactly as it’s intended.

I also love not setting the time back when I get home, perhaps in a bit of rebellion, and for a few days I play the game of “what would I be doing right now at this hour?”