the first one was a present

my early years of work were in beijing, and the production business there back then was not a regulated one. no crew union, so the schedule was built out of daylight and other people's calendars — 抢天光, snatching the light — and it ran until it stopped. when it stopped we did what everybody did: cigarettes outside, beer, skewers at two in the morning at a place with plastic stools. it was the best hour of the day and it billed me the next morning. the busier i got, the more of that hour i needed, and the more of it i had the worse the next day went, which made the work harder, which made the hour more necessary. that isn't a bad habit. a bad habit is a thing you do. that was a circle and i was inside it.

what got me out of it wasn't a decision. it was a watch.

the first one

at university my aerobics teacher gave me a casio for my birthday.

she was ten years older than me. i told her how i felt. she said she liked me too — the way you like a younger sister.

then she got married. and i left the city, which happens to be my hometown.

she never left. that's the whole story and i've never had anything to add to it.

i watched call me by your name years later and cried until my face swelled up. i didn't have to work out why.

and then i kept buying them

years later, in the middle of all that shooting, i bought myself a casio. then another one in a different colour. then it was simply the thing i did — after something ended, i'd buy one.

for a long time i told myself it was a reward. it isn't. or not only.

every one of them is the first one. everything i had to say got said in one conversation a long time ago, and the buying is what carried on afterwards.

still there in the morning

here's the ordinary half, and it's the part that's any use to anybody else.

the cigarette is gone. the beer is gone. the skewers are gone and also still with you, in the way you didn't want. the watch is on the table where you set it down, and it'll be there next year.

the strap on the one she gave me has perished; rubber does that. everything past ten years has been through a round of batteries. the old rewards cost me the next morning. this one costs me a battery.

i did quit, eventually. the watches came first and the quitting came later and i'm not going to pretend i know one caused the other. and if what you're carrying is heavier than a bad stretch, a watch isn't going to touch it.

what i buy now

a small toy, sometimes. out of my own shop, which is either the best perk of this job or evidence of something.

what changed isn't the object, it's what it's for. it used to be for finishing something big. now it's for working hard, or not giving up, or going to bed, or getting up early, or doing the thing on a day i didn't want to.

none of those is an achievement. nobody sends a card. which is why they're the ones worth marking.

kele has been ahead of me on this his whole life. he takes a toy apart and the satisfying part is the work, not the having. he's ten. he's done it every day of it.

about staying young

the usual line is that toys keep you young. i think it runs the other way — wanting one is the evidence, not the cause. people who lose it don't buy fewer toys; the pull goes first, and the buying stops on its own.

break a sweat. buy something you like. how simple it is is the part nobody believes.

the human side of the shop is that bracket — a counter that clicks, a lizard that screams, a stone ring that turns on your thumb, which is the oldest one of these we know about.

pick one. it'll be there tomorrow. and if it came from someone, a lot longer than that.

go play.