I learned to take photos with film and process them in college and found the experience just as you expressed it here—meditative. I loved everything about it!
Then digital came along and I shunned it for years. A pixel doesn’t render an image the same as grain and that meditative experience is absent. I have a digital camera now but it’s just not the same. I purchased an old Hasselblad from a friend a few years ago and it brought back that love. I just wish it wasn’t so expensive to buy and process film.
Great story, Marjan!