Getting Lost In The Process

Why frustration can be the most rewarding feeling of all.

Welcome to Small Bites — a place to ruminate on something that may not be fully-fledged out and/or something that doesn’t command a full 1,000 words dedicated to it. A place to inspire some conversation in the comments.

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All of us are just looking for distraction. In a way, that’s all anything really is during our waking hours. The weekly Screen Time report that Apple serves us every Sunday can be damning evidence of how we spend our time, but I’d venture to guess that few of us change our behavior because of it. Instead, we shudder, clear the notification, and go about our days.

In 2020, I decided to actually do something about it — or at least, I tried. I did that thing where you read a book and pretend to be an expert on something. This book, in particular, was about reducing your screen time in ways that are habitual rather than hacky. While I got my phone’s screen time down to about an hour and twenty minutes per day, that number slowly began to rise as we became more social (again, it was 2020).

As I began to return to my norm, I decided to dip my toe into some more “offline” activities — namely, film photography and vinyl records. Two things I knew very little about, but also two things I knew would be a positive distraction. And they were.

Until my camera broke last week during a photoshoot we were doing at my house.