Day 0: The self-taught route

Yesterday, I received a rejection email from the watchmaking school I had applied to. Since completing the bench tests, I had tried to prepare myself for that outcome. I knew I had done well, but not perfectly. That didn't make it any less disappointing, though the school was only one possible route into watchmaking.

Before going any further, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Guillem, I'm 23, and I was born in Barcelona, though I grew up in a smaller city nearby. I've always been curious about how things work, and I tend to learn by taking them apart and trying to put them back together.

Until I was 17, I paid little attention to watches. That changed when I came across a video of a Ludovic Ballouard Upside Down being set. I couldn't sleep that night. I stayed up reading every article I could find about the watch, trying to understand how something so beautiful worked. I still feel the same way today.

What started as an interest slowly became something more serious. I attended gatherings, met other enthusiasts and watchmakers, and began experimenting with simple, inexpensive movements. Each experience brought me a little closer to the craft and made me want to learn more.

Long before watches, that same curiosity led me to computers. I started developing software professionally when I was 16 and eventually built a career around solving problems and understanding complex systems. I still enjoy that work, but over time I began to want to make something physical. Watchmaking requires the same kind of logical thinking, but the result exists outside a screen. It can be held, repaired and, with enough care, kept running for generations.

I applied to watchmaking school because I wanted a strong technical foundation, and I still believe formal training would have a lot to offer. I could apply to other excellent schools or reapply to the same one for its next course, but first I want to try the self-taught route. It's how I've learned most of what I know, so it feels natural to take the same approach to watchmaking.

It won't be the easiest or fastest route. I'll make mistakes, struggle to find reliable information and probably break a few things along the way. This journal is where I intend to document that process: what I learn, what goes wrong and, hopefully, the progress in between.

In the long term, I'd like to make watches as independently as possible, from designing them to making as many of their components as I can. I'm nowhere near that today, but this is day zero.