If you want the boring CV, go to my LinkedIn instead.

A few years ago, I started a little watch blog/newsletter, Rescapement, as a passion project. I was a tech and media attorney by day, but wanted to do some creative writing too. I had gotten into watches while looking for something nice to wear on my wedding day (Nomos Tangente, thanks for asking), and it seemed like there wasn’t enough interesting writing about watches to go around.

Back when I started Rescapement in 2019, I kept getting a Joker why-so-serious? vibe with most watch content. Collectors were more concerned with matching their cashmere with their chronograph hand than they were with loosening up a bit. Sure, I love the history of watches, but I never let that get in the way of having a good time. And I loved other things about watches too: design, culture, Kanye.

More importantly, I’d always loved writing: I worked for my student newspaper in college and was an editor for the Northwestern Law Review in law school.

For the first few months, that was about it. I’d publish a weekly newsletter with some thoughts on watches. Sometimes interesting, sometimes not.

Then, the pandemic happened. Suddenly stuck at home, I had more time to write and read about watches. For the first time, I had “internet friends.” People I knew only through the internet and exchanging texts and DMs. Rescapement started to grow too. I started freelancing for places like Highsnobiety, A Collected Man, and Hodinkee. I attended my first watch auction (the one with the Tiffany Nautilus, no less). Rescapement climbed to nearly 10,000 subscribers, and the website was getting 100k+ views a month; I had advertisers every week. But I was still a full-time attorney.

Then, Hodinkee came knocking with the opportunity to go full-time into watches. Quitting the comfort of a job at a big law firm — a job I’d studied for years to get and many law students would kill for — was the hardest professional decision I’ve had to make yet. But I love watches, and I love writing about them even more, so I know it’ll be worth it.

If you want to continue following along on my journey, subscribe to my unpolished newsletter. If you want to chat, send me an email: aetraina[at]gmail.com.