Good morning {{first_name|Reader}},

This is not the regular format. No Observation, no Watch, no Number. It’s a mid-year check-in. Specifically, the honest version of where things stand after six months of building something I genuinely believe in.

Three sections. What is working. What is harder than expected. And a side hustle in a Prius that is either deeply responsible or deeply ridiculous depending on how you look at it.

Here is where Own The Watch actually is at the halfway point of 2026.

I have been writing a novel between sets.

Not a metaphor. Monday through Friday, five to seven in the morning, I am in the garage lifting weights. In between sets, I sit down at the desk in the corner and add to a manuscript called The Cave: What the Earth Keeps.

A volcanologist named Marcus Hale goes to Iceland to understand why his partner died in a cave, and what he finds underneath the ground is worse than anything above it. Seventy-one thousand words in. Thirty-two chapters deep. A thriller that is inspired by many of my favorite other novels.

Before this book, I had written two nonfiction books and built a newsletter that reaches more than 6,300 people every week. Those projects gave me the self-confidence that I could write. The Cave is proving something totally different. That I can sustain a story across months, build characters who feel real, and produce fiction that moves the way I want it to move. When it is going well, the words come in the transition between the bench and the squat rack and I lose track of which one I am supposed to do next. When it is not going well, I sit there for three minutes and go back to lifting.

The target is 95,000 to 105,000 words for the completed first draft. The goal after that is the Amazon Best Seller program. (which I’d be grateful if you could help me get there when the time comes)

I think it is achievable. I am working toward it with the same consistency I bring to every other morning in that garage, before the inbox opens, before the day gets loud, before there are excuses to stop.

Seventy-one thousand words is not a finished book. But it is a book that is going to be finished.

Own The Watch is supposed to be a business.

I want to say that plainly because I haven’t always said it plainly. This is not a hobby. Hobbies do not require welcome sequences, referral programs, subscriber segments, Inner Circle tiers, digital products, HTML graphic systems, or Watch Consult booking pages. What I have built here is a business infrastructure. The gap right now is the “getting the business” and that the revenue has not caught up to it.

Over the last several months I worked with an ad agency, reasonably priced, excellent to work with, people I would recommend without hesitation, to run paid campaigns and grow the list. I spent more than $2,000. The subscribers who came in and I kept are genuinely engaged, and I track engagement far more carefully than raw subscriber count because vanity metrics are a trap. But when I add up what this newsletter costs to run every month versus what it brings in, I am still operating in the red. I understand the argument that you have to spend money to make money. I believe it. I am also taking a deliberate pause on paid acquisition until the monetization catches up to the infrastructure.

That is the business reality at the halfway point. Not a failure. Not a crisis. A gap that needs to close in the second half of the year. I tried something new and am adjusting.

There is also something I want to say about the watch content, and I want to be direct about it.

Over the years of writing this newsletter I have learned something about myself as a collector and a writer. I am a specific type of watch person. The references I care about deeply I could write about indefinitely. The Explorer II. (as some of you are tired of hearing about) Watches with genuine purpose and history, pieces that earn their complications and will still matter twenty years from now. That is the territory where my opinion is worth something to you.

Most watches do not fall into that category, and when I sit down to write about one that does not genuinely move me, I find it difficult to give you an honest recommendation. I can describe it. I can run the specs. But the thing that makes the Watch section worth reading, a genuine editorial perspective from someone with no financial stake in what you buy, gets harder to deliver when I am not writing about something I actually deeply care about.

I want to ask you directly…

I want a new car.

Not a Corvette. Not a boat. The kind of midlife crisis I appear to be having involves wanting a Lexus or a Toyota luxury SUV, something with a third row because, it of course will be “practical.” It will have some presence, and is the feeling of a reward for the last decade of building toward something. I know exactly how financially irresponsible a new vehicle is. The depreciation curve the moment it leaves the lot. The insurance premium. The opportunity cost of that down payment compounding in an index fund for the next ten years instead. Is it a “waste” of money? Probably. I have run those numbers and I still want the car.

So I am DoorDashing in the Prius to earn it.

Four shifts in. A few hours per shift, driving around Wasilla, getting somewhere around 60 miles per gallon per session. The money goes into a separate account that has no relationship to our savings rate, our retirement contributions, or anything else we have built. I plan to run shifts after work during the week and on weekends when the schedule allows. When that account hits the number, the car becomes a real conversation. Not before.

I am adding Uber to the mix shortly, which should help the hourly rate. The Prius is, as it turns out, a remarkably good vehicle for this kind of work. (IMO, everyone who drives a lot needs a Prius)

My wife came up with the name for this section. Dream Car Uploading. She was right that it is a better name than anything I would have written. She is usually right about these things.

Whether this approach is deeply responsible or deeply boring I genuinely don’t know. I am comfortable with either characterization. What I know is that I want the thing, I know what it costs, and I am not willing to reach into the wrong account to get it early. That is the only version of this purchase I am willing to make.

Do you have a dream car? Something you are saving toward or something that still feels out of reach? Reply and tell me.

I am curious what the OTW version of a dream car looks like for the people who read this newsletter.

That is the honest halfway point of 2026.

A novel that is becoming real, written before the sun comes up in an Alaskan garage, getting bit by mosquitos. A newsletter that has the infrastructure of a business and is working toward the revenue to match it. And a Prius running food delivery routes through Wasilla so I can buy a car I have no business buying, bought the right way.

None of it is a highlight reel. All of it is real.

If you have thoughts on any of it, the book, the watch question, the dream car, or anything else, reply to this email. I read every one.

Until next time.