Photography tricks my ADHD brain into doing something borderline miraculous: It allows me to focus on exactly one thing at a time. When I press the shutter and hear that lovely little ka-chunk, the inner chatter winks out. I feel oddly connected to the moment by being outside it, observing through the frame instead of occupying it. As an introvert, the perimeter suits me. Somewhere within the knobs, the clicks, and the small arithmetic of light, I get a reliable moment of quiet.

The whole process is pleasantly dissociative, and if there’s one hobby I’m unreasonably good at lately, it’s dissociating. I tend to compulsively over-edit my photos. Not because I think they need it, but because it’s a way back into the relief of that moment. I’m borrowing these scenes as places to hide. I think that’s why they sometimes come off a bit dreamlike: I’m trying to preserve the fantasy of how it felt to step out of the noise for a second.

I should mention that I had no particular relationship with photography until a director friend of mine mistook my ownership of a camera for competence. Since then, it’s been one long side quest, all kicked off by that auspicious misunderstanding. My director friend—very good at his job and very confident I was further along than I actually was—suggested I send him a lookbook to be considered for a behind-the-scenes project.

Technically, I was “doing photography.” I’d bought a ’70s SLR and had shot a couple rolls of film. But something told me that wasn’t what he meant. So, of course, I said nothing about how wildly unqualified I was. The timing was perfect in that perfectly terrible way: I was mid-breakup, and cosplaying as a photographer sounded like a promising detour from my feelings. It was avoidance you can invoice, so I Googled “lookbook,” dragged a few frames into a template, and hit send.

Shockingly, I got the gig. The first few days were predictably disastrous. Apparently, it’s not “professional” to swear at the talent. Or the client. Or the director. But by day three, the panic eased, and the camera started making sense. I noticed something strange: I felt more like myself observing through the lens than I did standing in the room without it. The whole process clicked into place, just as if it had been waiting for me.

Photography offers that rare balance of technical and creative skills that flip the right switches. It turns out you can stumble into the thing you need most. So, I guess, viewed through a certain light, you could say I decided to learn an entirely new technical art form as an elaborate means of avoiding therapy.

How very Seattle of me.

Photography by Nick Ward.