It all started with a flower.

🌼 The (literal) big picture: In the bleak early days of the pandemic in March 2020, while taking a lonely walk through my deserted neighborhood, I passed an early blooming flower. A small, yellow sign of hope, Axios' Ben Berkowitz writes.

• Something compelled me to pull out my phone and take a picture, which was not at all my usual habit.

Yes, but: It was soon apparent that the phone snap wasn't good enough.

• Maybe I should buy a real camera? Take up a little hobby? An excuse to get outside during our dreary national moment.
• And so it began.

🌀 Soon I had accounts with every new and used gear dealer, bookmarks for every photo shopping site, a YouTube library of reviewers on whose every word I hung, and a hard drive full of photos that no one would ever see.

Between the lines: Photography enthusiasts talk a lot about Gear Acquisition Syndrome, or GAS. (Musicians know it well, too.) It's the compulsion, once you have the gear you want, to buy more because ... well, more is better, no?

• 📸 My own case of this particular malady was both instant and terminal.

The intrigue: There can be a fine line sometimes between hobby and addiction. A release is good; spending money you shouldn't is unhealthy.

• It was never excessive, but frequently ill-advised.

✋ It took more than four years (and, admittedly, a few thousand dollars wasted) to break the habit.

• I course-corrected by selling everything and shifting to renting when it really mattered, like vacations.
• To this day, I still spend a little free time almost daily reading gear blogs or watching reviews, but now without actually buying anything.

The bottom line: We all need a hobby.

• But those hobbies should relieve our stress, not add more. Everything in moderation — even pictures of pretty flowers.

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Even in the deep freeze, Finish Line reader John Ashley Cadwell makes sure nobody goes hungry.

• "Loving all the snow here in Vermont," Cadwell writes us.

🐦 "Note the bird feeder in the foreground. We keep our winged friends fed and happy."

🌱 Send us photos of spring awakening in your hometowns to [email protected].