I spent 15 minutes finding the right angle for a photo. I have no memory of what that place actually felt like

It was somewhere in Porto. Beautiful spot, light was perfect, the kind of scene that looks exactly like every travel photo you've ever saved. And I stood there, moved left, moved right, waited for people to clear the frame, tried landscape, tried portrait, tried again.

Got the shot. It's a good photo. Lots of likes.

I could not tell you what the air smelled like. I don't remember if there was music nearby or what I was thinking. I was there for maybe 20 minutes and I have basically no memory of being there, just the image of it.

I've been thinking about that a lot since. Because the places I actually remember from that trip, I barely photographed. A tiny cafe where the owner just started talking to me. A street I wandered down for no reason. A view I saw for about two minutes before it got cloudy. I was just... there for those. Not performing being there.

I'm not anti-photography and I'm not going to pretend I've deleted Instagram. But I think somewhere along the way travel started including this whole second job of documenting it in a way that looks right to people who weren't there. And that job takes up more headspace than I realized.

Curious if anyone else has noticed this shift in themselves, and whether you've actually done anything about it or just accepted it as part of how travel works now.