Winding Forward: In 2026, I Hope to Say “Yes” More Often

Photo by Chris Antzoulis - Astoria Park, Queens, down the street from my old apartment.

At this point, I’m just a needle skipping on the same old vinyl, but I’ll repeat it: I am not a watch journalist. I’m a storyteller, a poet, a comic book writer, and a marketer who happens to also write about watches (and I do love it). Maybe I’m a person who uses watches as a way to talk about everything else I don’t know how to say out loud. Either way, the truth is this: I tell stories because it’s how I survive. And sometimes, those stories are the only way I can make sense of myself and how loud everything is in my head. 

Writing in the store window of Carmine Street Comics in the West Village, Manhattan. The owner would have working artists and writers come in to work so customers could chat with them about comics.

In 2020, I lost the life I had built for myself.

I don’t mean that dramatically, even though it felt dramatic at the time. I didn’t lose it in some cinematic blaze or in a single defining moment. It was quieter than that. Slower. A series of goodbyes without closure. I had built a life in New York City, friends I saw every week, routines that grounded me, a version of myself that felt fully realized. Then, suddenly, that life was gone. I moved back to Virginia, and the world I had spent a decade carefully constructing became something I could only visit in memory, and occasionally in person. 

I’ve written before about how hard that transition was. About grief disguised as practicality. About how you can love a place so deeply that leaving it feels like losing a limb. But what I don’t often talk about is how isolating it became afterward. Not because I didn’t have people around me, but because I intentionally stopped letting those people in.

It’s strange, the way grief can make you cautious instead of reckless. I didn’t want to rebuild something just to lose it again. So I kept myself small. I worked. I wrote. I filled my time with productivity and purpose and tried to convince myself that connection could be replaced with output. And for a while, that worked. I told myself that I was fine. That solitude was chosen. That independence was strength.

And then came this past December 31st.

Photo by Chris Antzoulis - Phantom and I sitting in the back corner of our favorite coffee shop in Norfolk, Virginia

I spent the last day of the year the way I often do, tucked into the back corner of my favorite coffee shop, laptop open, camera nearby, Phantom curled up beside me on their couch like a quiet anchor to the world. The shop was empty when I arrived. It was one of those slow holiday mornings where time feels suspended, like everyone is somewhere else, and you’re allowed to exist without being perceived even more than usual. 

Will, the barista, was working that morning. We’ve known each other long enough for conversations to feel easy, familiar. He had music playing, Men at Work, as it turned out, and we ended up talking about albums and concerts and the strange way certain songs attach themselves to specific moments in your life, like the tie between Men at Work and one of the best episodes of Scrubs (the greatest doctor show of all time). We got onto our favorite albums and concerts. I told him my favorite band was U2. We bonded, briefly, over The Edge and the documentary he was in, “It Might Get Loud,” with Jack White and Jimmy Page. If you haven’t seen it, it is one of the most incredible music documentaries I’ve ever seen. We discussed the shared experience of loving music that seems to understand you better than most people do.

Eventually, I settled into my work. I had a watch to photograph. Words to write. A Form and Function podcast episode in one ear. That familiar, comforting multitasking haze kicked in alongside my Adderall, and I made hours disappear. I didn’t even notice when the music changed.

Until I did.

“Ultraviolet.”

Then “Out of Control.”

Then “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.”

And finally, “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

I realized, slowly, that Will had put on a U2 playlist just for me, or maybe it was for both of us. I looked around and noticed something else too: the shop had filled up. People had come in while I was buried in my work. People sitting with friends. Couples leaning into each other. Conversations layered over coffee cups and clinking mugs and plates against wood tables.

And there I was, alone.

Not in a tragic way. Just… observant. Aware.

Reading poetry at the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan

It hit me then how much I’ve built a life where solitude feels safer than closeness, how I’ve convinced myself that being self-contained is strength, when sometimes it’s just fear wearing a convincing costume.

Doing a comic book signing at Forbidden Planet in Manhattan with: (left to right) Michael Dialynas, James Tynion IV, Marguerite Bennett, IT ME, and Fabio Valle

At one point, a man sat near me and struck up a conversation. I’ll be honest, I was annoyed at first. I was in my head. In my zone. I didn’t want to be interrupted. But he was kind, and curious, and open. It was successfully disarming. We talked. About the year. About life. About how hard it had been.

He told me his girlfriend had called him mean, not cruel, not malicious, just mean. And that hearing it forced him to confront the way he’d been carrying his stress and pain and projecting it outward. He said he was trying to change that. Trying to do better.

I told him about myself. About being bullied when I was younger. About learning, at an early age, to turn everything inward. To make myself smaller. To punish myself before anyone else could. I told him that even now, decades later, I still fight that instinct. That even when I succeed, even when I’m loved, part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop.

We didn’t exchange numbers. We didn’t promise to keep in touch. We just shared a moment of honesty between two people who happened to sit next to each other on the last day of the year.

That may be enough.

Because here’s the thing: the watch community saved me in ways I don’t always articulate beyond quick exclamations of loving the hobby and people in it. Yet, through it, I found my voice again. I found connection. I found people who saw me, who valued what I had to say, who welcomed me in. I found a best friend in my “A Tale of Two Wristies” podcast co-host, Iman, someone who feels like family in a way I didn’t expect, couldn’t predict, but desperately needed.

I was with Fabio Valle and his wife, Ana, at Turntable Chicken Jazz in Koreatown, Manhattan, after Fabio and I spent the day promoting our comic at New York Comic Con.

And still, I’m learning.

I’m learning that isolation can look a lot like independence if you let it. I’m learning that protecting yourself too fiercely can keep out the very things you crave. I’m learning that healing doesn’t always mean fixing; it sometimes means allowing.

As I step into a new year, my hope is simple: to say yes more often. To let people in. To build something that doesn’t disappear the moment circumstances change. To trust that connection doesn’t have to end in loss.

I don’t know precisely what that will look like yet. But I know this: I don’t want to be alone in a coffee shop anymore, convincing myself that solitude is the same thing as peace—at least…not all the time. 

Not a sweeping resolution, but I figure it’s a start. 

Visiting best friends in NY after moving away.

REMEMBER, nerds…. to keep the comments clean. Please don’t make me pull out ole Abraham-Louis here.