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The Terrible Creative is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative humans trying to stay honest in a world that rewards pretending
The Sacred Mundane
I was watching Loki in the yard this morning. Out of nowhere he drops into that Border Collie crouch and just… stares.
Not a casual stare. A stare like the ball owes him money.
A stare like a Secret Service agent clocking a guy in a trench coat at the airport.
A stare like Karen next door watching kids skateboard on her street — pure, righteous intensity.
Whole body humming, eyes drilling holes through whatever it is only he can see.
And I’m standing there with my coffee thinking, Jesus, when’s the last time I looked at anything with that kind of presence?
Because me? I can’t pour a coffee without checking my phone, opening my inbox, scrolling headlines, already convincing myself I’m behind before the day even starts. Loki’s locked on like a sniper, and I’m googling iPads I’m never going to buy.
That’s what I want to talk about today — focus, distraction, and the two liars in my head who never shut up.
Have you ever had a day where you tell yourself you’ve been “busy,” but if someone actually asked you what you did, you couldn’t explain it?
I know I have. I used to have days like this all the time.
Here’s how it usually went:
9:00 — sit down at the desk, ready to work.
9:07 — already on Instagram, watching a golden retriever learn to skateboard.
9:15 — open my inbox, click into a Best Buy ad for an iPad I’m not going to buy.
And here’s the sad part: I’ve bought several iPads in my life. Every time I convinced myself this one would make me productive. Every one ended up uncharged, collecting dust like a little glass tombstone for ambition.
By 10:00 I’d already lost hours to scrolling, clicking, rabbit holes. By lunch I couldn’t account for half my morning. Just me in the kitchen reheating a bean-and-cheese burrito, wondering where the time went.
Maybe there’s a client call, maybe a couple emails. Then news headlines, YouTube explaining those same headlines, and a break outside to throw the ball for Loki — who, by the way, has more focus and professional drive than I did all day.
And here’s the kicker: at 4:57 I’d finally send the one email I promised to get out “before end of day.” Three sentences. Ninety seconds. And my brain would throw a parade like I’d just wrapped a three-day campaign.
And then later, if a friend asked how my day was, I’d say the line we all say: “Crazy day. Swamped. Nonstop.”
Nonstop what? Scrolling? Moving icons around on my desktop? Fantasizing about iPads that were never going to save me?
The truth is, that wasn’t work. It wasn’t rest. It was that fake middle ground — too guilty to relax, too distracted to focus. And it wrecked me.
And that’s when I realized: I’m not even the one running the show. I’ve got two liars in my head, heckling me all day. And chances are… you’ve met them too.
Introduction
My name is Patrick Fore, and this is The Terrible Photographer Podcast where we have honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice. This is episode 29 and today we're talking about something I'm calling "The Sacred Mundane" — because I think we've forgotten how to be fully present for anything, including our own lives.
But first, let me introduce you to the voices that have been running my day-to-day operations like a couple of middle managers from hell.
The first one sounds like Gary Vaynerchuk had a baby with a fitness influencer: "If you're not up at 5 AM, you're failing. You think successful people sleep? Winners don't rest, Patrick. Winners grind harder than a Starbucks barista during finals week."
I call him Hustle Harry. He wears Allbirds ironically and drinks celery juice unironically.
The second voice is Harry's enabler, disguised as your best friend: "You've worked so hard today, man. You deserve this. Grab the chips. One more scroll won't kill you. You've earned some Netflix. Besides, this documentary about a psycho mom catfishing her own daughter, technically counts as market research, right?"
Meet Lazy Laura. She's got a PhD in rationalization and a master's degree in making procrastination sound like self-care.
Now, you might think these two are opposites. Harry pushes you toward constant action, Laura pulling you toward constant rest. But here's what I've learned: they're not enemies. They're business partners. A psychological pyramid scheme designed to keep you exhausted while accomplishing nothing.
They're both liars, and they're both stealing the same thing from you — presence. Real presence. The ability to actually inhabit the moment you're in instead of performing the idea of productivity or pretending distraction is relaxation.
And if you've ever found yourself checking email at midnight, or scrolling your phone while your brain tells you you're "taking a break," or feeling guilty every time you sit down, or feeling anxious every time you try to focus on one thing... then you know exactly what I'm talking about.
You're living in the fake middle ground. And it's exhausting.
The Meandering: The Grift
The Performance Economy
Just a couple of days ago, I opened LinkedIn and saw this post from another photographer in another city.
Picture this: 6 AM. Golden hour light streaming through his office window like he hired God as a gaffer. Coffee mug positioned with the precision of a product shoot. Laptop tilted just enough to catch that glow — the I’m conquering the world before sunrise reflection.
Caption: “Day 247 of the grind. 5 AM start because winners don’t sleep in. Coffee tastes better when you know you’re already ahead of 99% of people. When you love what you do, it’s not work. #hustle #5amclub #neverstopgrinding #blessed.”
And I’m sitting there in sweatpants and a hoodie, drinking actual coffee — because I actually like coffee, not because I needed to stage steam for LinkedIn — thinking: Dude, you staged a coffee cup. At six in the morning. Who hurt you?
But I’ll give him credit. The lighting’s perfect. The composition’s dialed. He probably shot twenty frames just to get the steam curling in the right direction. It’s like watching someone audition for the role of Guy Who Crushes Mornings in a movie no one’s making.
This is peak LinkedIn performance culture: that weird intersection where self-help, self-promo,networking, and Instagram-inspo all smash together into a single, over-caffeinated TED talk about your breakfast routine. And the audience? Other people giving TED talks about their breakfast routines.
Here’s the sick part though: I kept scrolling. For twenty minutes.
Harry’s in my head whispering: “See? That guy’s already ahead of you. You should probably post something too. Where’s your morning inspo content, Patrick? Winners document.”
And Laura slides right in: “But first, keep scrolling. This is research. You’re studying the competition. Totally counts as professional development.”
So there I am, twenty minutes gone, sitting in my sweatpants, drinking lukewarm coffee, feeling like a fraud for not staging my morning routine like a goddamn fashion shoot.
That’s the trap. This guy’s productivity theater didn’t just waste his time — it stole mine. Harry and Laura weaponized it to make me feel guilty about being a human being who drinks coffee without needing applause.
The ADHD Amplification Chamber
Now, if you've got a brain like mine — ADHD, dopamine-seeking, constantly hungry for the next hit of stimulation — this whole dynamic gets weaponized against you.
My brain doesn't want to do one thing. It wants to do seventeen things simultaneously while thinking about twenty-three other things I should probably be doing instead. It's like having a browser with 847 tabs open, except the browser is my consciousness and I can't figure out which tab is playing that annoying audio ad about crypto investments.
So Harry jumps in with his efficiency gospel: "You should be checking your email AND editing this photo AND answering that text AND planning tomorrow's shoot AND researching new gear AND updating your website AND posting on Instagram AND responding to comments AND networking on LinkedIn! Multitask, baby! Maximize your throughput! You're not a machine if you're not running at 847% capacity!"
And when that inevitably becomes overwhelming — because it turns out human brains aren't actually designed to run seventeen parallel processes like some kind of biological server farm
— Laura slides in with her therapeutic voice: "This is way too much pressure. Let's take a break. You've been working so hard. This HBO documentary about serial killers definitely counts as research for your next portrait session. You're studying human psychology. It's basically continuing education."
Both of them feeding off that constant need for stimulation. Both of them making sure I never actually land anywhere long enough to do anything well.
The science on this is pretty brutal. Linda Stone coined this term "continuous partial attention" — this compulsive need to stay connected and responsive to everything, all the time. It's like being an air traffic controller for your own life, except all the planes are crashing and you can't remember why you wanted to be a pilot in the first place.
Psychology research shows that task-switching can reduce productivity by up to 40%, especially for complex cognitive work. Every time you bounce between tasks, your brain has to reboot. Every time you toggle from work to distraction, you lose a little more of your actual self.
But Harry and Laura don't care about the neuroscience. Harry cares about looking productive: "But what if someone emails you and you don't respond immediately? What if there's an opportunity? What if Gary V posts something inspirational?"
Laura cares about avoiding discomfort: "Your brain is tired from all that switching. You need stimulation. This Instagram story about someone's lunch is basically market research about lifestyle photography trends."
They're keeping you busy enough to feel important and distracted enough to avoid the uncomfortable reality of actually being present for your own life.
The Tuesday Intervention
But let me tell you about the Tuesday that accidentally saved my sanity.
I was in my garage office, editing a tech campaign for some startup that was definitely going to revolutionize the world by making it easier to share spreadsheets in the cloud. Riveting stuff. World-changing - apparently no one told them about Google Sheets. And I was locked in you know: Apple Music playlist called "Deep Focus" (which is apparently what we call background noise now), Discord notifications from my accountability server pinging like a smoke detector with a dying battery, email alerts chiming every minute for Newsletters ill never read and sales people trying to sell me leads and more best buy ads trying to sell me more ipads.
Harry was conducting his usual symphony of anxiety: "You could be answering those Discord messages while you edit! Think of the efficiency! Check your email between every photo adjustment! Someone might need something! You might miss an opportunity! Gary V never misses opportunities! Winners stay connected!"
Laura was playing her supporting role: "You've been staring at this screen for like an hour. Your eyes probably hurt. Maybe check Instagram real quick. Just a quick scroll to give your brain a break. Oh look, someone posted a photo they took 4 years ago for this campaign. (I know because they keep reposting it every few months) This is important market research about lifestyle photography trends and millennial consumer behavior."
And then my fiber internet just… died. Middle of the afternoon, gone. Email froze. Discord went silent. Even the Safari tabs full of camera gear I can’t afford—dead in the water. For once it was just me and Capture One, no noise, no algorithm, no notifications clawing for my attention.
For about ten minutes, I was trapped in single-tasking hell. And something incredible happened.
Harry went quiet. Laura shut up. And I remembered what it felt like to actually see a photograph instead of just process pixels.
Suddenly I could see the story. The way this person’s hands moved when they talked about their work. The micro-expression that slipped out between the posed smile and the real one. The light catching their face in a way that made them look like an actual human being instead of a stock photo called “Diverse Professional Looking Confident in Modern Office Space.”
I hadn’t lost my eye for this work. I’d just buried it under so much noise I couldn’t hear myself think. I’d been so busy optimizing my workflow that I forgot about the actual work. So obsessed with the performance of productivity that I forgot what it felt like to produce something.
In that forced silence, I found something I didn’t realize I’d misplaced: presence. Sacred attention. The ability to fully inhabit what I was doing instead of performing the idea of doing it while simultaneously planning the next seventeen things I’d do after I finished not really doing the thing I was supposed to be doing.
And when the internet finally blinked back on, I did something radical: I left it off. Closed everything except Capture One. Turned off notifications. Finished that edit in half the time it usually takes — and it was honestly some of my best work in months.
Both Harry and Laura tried to stage an immediate comeback.
Harry: "Great! Now you can multitask again! Think of all the emails piling up! You're probably missing something important! Someone might need you! Check your phone! What if there's an emergency! What if Gary V posted something!"
Laura: "Wow, you worked so hard in that focused session! You definitely deserve a reward scroll. Check the news! See what's happening in the world! This counts as staying informed! You're basically a responsible citizen!"
But I'd tasted something they couldn't give me: the satisfaction of complete attention. The weird peace that comes from doing one thing well instead of doing twelve things poorly while feeling guilty about not doing twenty-three other things that probably didn't need to be done anyway.
The Return & Resolution: The Guru Is a Dog
You know who taught me the most about presence? My border collie, Loki.
You have to understand, Border Collies are bred for it — for focus and intensity. Centuries of genetic fine-tuning turned them into laser beams with fur. Their whole job is to read subtle cues, lock onto movement, and never let go until the work is done. They’re wired to take one thing and make it their entire world.
And Loki? When that dog locks onto a tennis ball, the rest of the world ceases to exist. You could walk by with a rare steak — his absolute favorite thing on earth, the thing that makes him abandon all dignity and become a drooling fool — and he wouldn’t even glance up. His entire universe collapses down to one bright yellow sphere of possibility.
He’s not performing focus for an audience. He’s not thinking about focus. He’s not checking his phone to see if other dogs have posted about their tennis ball experiences.
Harry, of course, would be screaming: “Don’t just chase the ball! Guard the house, check the squirrels, build a personal brand while you’re at it! Winners multitask, Loki!”
And Laura would slide in all gentle: “Oh honey, you’ve chased that ball six times already today. You’ve earned a little me-time. Go stretch out in the sun, scroll some scent-based social media. Self-care, babe.”
But Loki doesn’t listen to either of them. He just locks in. And when the ball is gone, put away, he’s fully present for whatever comes next. No guilt about the ball he didn’t catch. No anxiety about future balls. No performance of being a “focused dog.” Just here, now, ready for whatever’s actually happening.
If Rahm Dass or the Stoics Had a Dog, they would have a dog like Loki. Loki’s motto is, “Be here, now.
That’s sacred attention. That’s what presence actually feels like when you’re not performing it for Instagram or LinkedIn or the invisible productivity judge who lives in your head.
And here's what I've learned about the difference between being busy and being occupied:
Busy feels like getting tossed around in a pinball machine designed by someone who genuinely hates you. Harry and Laura taking turns pulling the levers, bouncing you between guilt about not working hard enough and fake rest that doesn't actually restore anything. You're moving constantly but never arriving anywhere. You're always on your way to something but never actually there.
It's like being stuck in traffic but the traffic is your own life and you're somehow both the driver and the traffic jam.
Occupied feels like choosing the table where you want to sit and ordering the drink you actually want instead of whatever the person before you was having. It's intentional. It's present. It's the opposite of performance.
Real rest — sacred rest — isn't something you steal between tasks while Harry screams at you about wasted time and missed opportunities. It's not something you earn by posting the right Instagram story or answering enough emails to temporarily satisfy Laura's guilt-management algorithm.
Real rest is when objectives are met, loops are closed, tools are put away. When Harry shuts up because there's actually nothing left to hustle about. When Laura goes quiet because you don't need her permission anymore — you're choosing rest from a place of completion instead of defaulting to distraction from a place of avoidance.
It's the difference between collapsing into your couch at 11:47 PM with your phone still buzzing with unfinished business and seventeen browser tabs open to things you were going to do but didn't, versus actually closing your laptop knowing that everything that needed to get done today got done.
Presence doesn't double your output. I want to be clear about that. This isn't another productivity hack disguised as spiritual wisdom. This isn't about optimizing yourself into a more efficient human machine that can process more inputs and generate more outputs per unit of time.
Sacred attention changes the quality of everything. The work feels different when you're actually there for it instead of performing it. The rest feels different when it's chosen instead of stolen. Even something as mundane as editing photos becomes... well, sacred. Not because the work itself is holy, but because the attention you bring to it is complete.
When Harry shuts up and Laura goes quiet and you're just there, fully present for the thing in front of you, that's when the magic happens. Not Instagram magic. Not productivity-hack magic. Just the quiet magic of being fully alive in the moment you're actually living instead of the moment you're performing or the moment you're avoiding.
The Light Leak: The Loki Method
So here's what I want you to try. Not tomorrow — because tomorrow is when Harry will convince you that you need to research the optimal time-blocking methodology first, and Laura will suggest you should probably download seventeen different apps and create the perfect environment before attempting this revolutionary concept.
Right now. Today. Before they can mount their defense.
I call it the Loki Method. It's simple: you're going to build a schedule that would make a border collie proud.
Pick three tasks for today. Real tasks. Maybe editing a batch of photos, writing that proposal you've been avoiding, organizing your gear. Or maybe it's finishing that presentation, cleaning out your inbox, working on that budget spreadsheet you've been procrastinating on for weeks.
Here's the radical part: you're going to schedule your distractions too.
9:00-9:45 AM: Focus block. Edit photos. Write the presentation. One task, nothing else open. 9:45-10:00 AM: Break block. Coffee and scroll time. Go nuts. Check Instagram, see what the productivity influencers are performing today. 10:00-10:45 AM: Focus block. Write that proposal. Answer those emails. Whatever comes next. 10:45-11:00 AM: Another break. Stretch, check the news, grab a snack, whatever.
My personal hack? An egg timer on my desk. Old school, analog, loud as hell when it goes off. I set it for 45 minutes and that's my Loki time — complete focus on one thing. When it dings, I get 15 minutes to be as scattered as my ADHD brain wants to be.
But here's the key to making this actually work: you have to protect those focus blocks like they're a client shoot.
Practical stuff that actually helps:
Put your phone in another room. Seriously. If your office is upstairs, leave it downstairs. If you work from home, put it in the car in the garage. The distance matters — it has to be inconvenient enough that you won't just grab it without thinking.
Turn off WiFi if you can. I know it sounds extreme, but for 45 minutes? You won't die. If you need internet for the task, close everything except what you actually need.
Close all browser tabs except the one you're using. I mean it. All of them. That tab about camera gear you might buy someday? Close it. That article you were going to read later? Bookmark it and close it.
Tell people you're unavailable. Put Slack on "Do Not Disturb." Let calls go to voicemail. The world will survive without you for 45 minutes.
Don't let Harry convince you that the breaks are wasted time: "You could be using those fifteen minutes to network! To optimize! To crush!" The breaks aren't bugs in the system — they're features. Your brain needs them.
Don't let Laura turn the focus blocks into guilt trips: "This is too rigid! What if something important happens? What if you miss something?" Missing stuff for 45 minutes isn't going to kill you. And if it's truly an emergency, they'll call twice.
The genius is that you're not fighting your brain — you're working with it. You want to scroll? Great, there's a time for that. You want to focus? Great, there's a time for that too. You want to check if that LinkedIn photographer posted another 5 AM coffee performance? Perfect, there's literally 15 minutes scheduled for exactly that.
Schedule your rest like you schedule a client meeting. Make it essential, not earned. Because here's what I've learned: presence isn't about perfect focus all day long. It's about complete attention when attention is called for, and complete rest when rest is called for.
Even Loki takes naps between tennis balls.
It's Tuesday night again. 11:47 PM. Router light blinking across the wall like a digital heartbeat that never gets tired, never takes a break, never questions its purpose.
But this time, my laptop is closed.
Not because I've conquered productivity or figured out some revolutionary life hack. Not because I've achieved the Instagram-worthy morning routine of that photographer whose performance I witnessed on LinkedIn.
But because I've learned what Ram Dass knew: Be here, now. The difference between performing presence and actually being present. Between looking busy and being occupied. Between fake rest and sacred rest.
Harry will be back tomorrow, probably before my first cup of coffee, with his updated list of things I should be doing differently and better and faster. "Morning, champ! Did you see that photographer's latest post? He's already three hours into his day! You're falling behind!"
Laura will show up too, with her soothing promises of earned breaks: "You've been working for like 45 minutes straight. That's basically a marathon in today's attention economy. You should probably check what's happening in the world."
But now I know their game. They're not trying to help me work better or rest better. They're trying to keep me from being fully alive in the moment I'm actually in. They're selling me a fake middle ground where I never have to be completely present for my own life.
The sacred mundane isn't about making ordinary tasks feel special through some kind of productivity performance. It's about bringing your whole self to whatever you're doing, whether that's editing a photo or taking a nap or having a convrsation with someone you love without checking your phone to see if anything more interesting is happening somewhere else.
It's about learning what Loki already knows: when the tennis ball is in front of you, the tennis ball is your entire world. When the work is in front of you, the work is your entire world. When rest is in front of you, rest is your entire world.
Be here, now. Not in the highlight reel you might post later. Not in the optimized version of yourself that Harry keeps promising you can become. Not in the comfortable distraction Laura keeps offering.
Here. Now. In the present moment — the only moment you actually have.
Stay curious. Stay Couragous. Stay present. And yeah, Stay Human.