By: Dr. Shaun Lynch
August 16, 2026
Read Time – 5 Minutes

Everyone else was still asleep when I left our tent and walked down for coffee. The campground was quiet, and the early light along the Maine coast was already brighter than I was used to at home.

The common area under the big canvas tent was mostly empty when I got there. It smelled like brewing coffee, damp wood, and that slightly wet canvas smell you only get in the morning time. A few doors were propped open, letting in a cool breeze from the bay. I took my coffee and yellow notebook to a corner table near one of the open doors.

For a few minutes, I did what I usually do when I’m alone early in the morning. I checked my email, scanned my calendar, and started figuring out what we were doing in the national park that day.

When I finally put my phone down and opened the notebook, I noticed a young woman sitting alone across the room. She looked to be in her early thirties and had picked one of the seats with a clear view of the water.

She had AirPods in both her ears and was quietly cross-stitching. When I got up to refill my coffee, I walked by close enough to see a red lobster starting to take shape. I’d seen her the night before at the s’mores station with two young kids, so I figured it might be for one of them.

Watching her brought me right back to my mother. When I was younger, she would sit on the couch with the TV on and cross-stitch things for our house or gifts for other people. She could sit like that for a whole evening with the hoop tilted toward the lamp, working through a pattern that wouldn’t be finished for weeks.

I had a few of them hanging in my room as a kid. The one I remember best was a map of North Carolina, with the major cities stitched in and small pictures for each region, including a lighthouse at the coast and mountains on the left side.

At some point, I was curious enough to try it myself, so she taught me. There was the wooden embroidery hoop, Aida cloth, the colorful floss, a tapestry needle and a pattern book spread out beside us.

What I remember most is that it was tedious and slow. I think I finished one or two and neither of the final products looked anything like hers.

During the 45 minutes I sat there, the woman kept stitching. Every so often, she would pause and look out at the water. I never once saw her phone come out. The cloth stayed in her lap as she worked the needle through the pattern.

As the room filled with families coming down for breakfast, she kept going at the same unhurried pace. What struck me was that she seemed perfectly content to leave the lobster unfinished that morning, or for however long it took.

And maybe that was what stayed with me. I couldn’t remember the last time I did something that would take weeks and wasn’t really for anything.

Most of what I do now has something attached to it. I walk and run for my health. Writing in my notebook early in the morning used to be the one thing I did for no particular reason. Now there is an audience and a small business behind it. I put both of them there.

Which is probably why I noticed her in the first place. I was sitting there twenty feet away, checking email and sorting the day into tasks, while someone else was doing something slow and quiet.

Work has a way of filling the space too. An hour opens on my calendar and almost immediately I start looking for what should go there. I tell myself I’m protecting the time, but mostly I’m looking for the next useful thing to get done.

The course you finally hand off gets replaced by clinical skills testing you agreed to back in April. A canceled meeting becomes email time. And the small opening that looked like breathing room turns into another place to feel responsible.

I’ve started noticing how quickly I do this. The work doesn’t have to be bad or meaningless to take over the space. Most of it feels important and that’s what makes it so easy to let it in.

Sitting there that morning, I kept coming back to one question:

When was the last time you spent an hour on something that didn’t need to be useful?

Something you weren’t trying to get better at, track, share with anyone, or turn into something else.

By the time I closed my notebook, I had written about two pages of notes from our family trip. The woman was still there, moving her needle through the fabric and pausing now and then to look at the water. We never spoke.

As I walked back to the campsite, I thought about the red lobster slowly taking shape in her lap. A few days later, we brought home the easier version: a T-shirt, a hoodie, a magnet for the fridge, and a stuffed lobster from the gift shop near the park entrance.

I still don’t know what I would make instead.

When did you last give an hour to something that produced nothing? Something you weren’t trying to get better at, track, share with anyone, or turn into something useful.

If that question stayed with you, I write about this twice a month for mid-career faculty and professionals whose roles have grown around them one responsibility at a time. You can subscribe here.

Until next time.