Author: Patrick Rhone

I have to wear a watch. I’m very old school this way. I feel naked without one. Time itself is so precious and fleeting, I need to feel aware of my place and connection to it at all times.
Perhaps it’s a mark of my age, but I don’t understand how one can get used to checking the time on their phone. Even if it’s right there when it’s turned on.
I also have rigid and specific preferences surrounding the type of watch I will wear. It must be analog. It must have real numbers. Not markers, not roman numerals. Numbers. It also must have a day and date. I can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, do you honestly expect me to remember the date?
My current watch is a Timex Perpetual Calendar. Great watch, simple, durable, fits my requirements, and I don’t have to remember which months have 30 days.

I have two favorite drummers of all time. They are radically different from each other. But what I love about them is the same.

Stewart Copeland is best known as drummer for The Police. As a drummer, he is best known for his precision and his ability to get a myriad of versatility using a relatively small drum kit.

Alex Van Halen is the drummer for Van Halen. As a drummer, he is best known for his big sound and for is ability to, in the space of a four minute song, make use of every piece of his very large drum kit.

You may look at these two and wonder how they could possibly have anything, outside of being drummers, in common. Here’s how: They both take the tools at hand and use them to their fullest extent. Big or small, they each squeeze every drop from their sets. In doing so, they each have carved out a place of their own in the history of modern rock music.

It is a reminder for me to try to do the same. No matter if I am using pen and paper, a smartphone, or a desktop computer. Command the tool at hand, squeeze every drop, carve out a place.