Puffy.

My eyes are puffy. Red and raw underneath. Swollen upper lids. They’ve been like this for days and days. This morning was the first morning I could tell they were a little bit better. Which produced a crazy-outsized feeling of relief, after weeks of seeing multiple doctors and “specialists,” all of whom told me contradictory things about how to make them better, then criticized the direction I’d been given by the previous doctor, whose errant advice I’d followed, which had only made things worse.  

Now, to be clear, this is not a big deal. Like, at all.

My vision is fine. I’m sleeping through the night now. Things are on the upswing and the only direction I really need to follow is one I’ve been given since I was three years old: just don’t scratch at it.

The key to making sure this doesn’t happen again? Remember that if I’m going to have a teary, existential, rose-induced, late night heart-to-heart with a dear friend, this time I should take my damn mascara off before I go to sleep.

Not only is this not a big deal, but in the grand scheme of things it is as laughably tiny as the eyelid pores I lazily clogged up with Maybelline.

But it feels huge.

Little things feel huge to me right now.

Which is annoying as hell. Because you’d think the context of a global pandemic would have the opposite effect. Nothing like a worldwide virus to put mild inconveniences into perspective, right?

Nope.

For most of my life, in my mind, I’ve dealt exclusively in big things. Big goals. Big aspirations. Big milestones. When I was a kid I wanted to get into a big name college. When I graduated I wanted to get a big job title at a big agency. I wanted to use the money I made to go on big trips. Not long after I started rowing my single I wanted to win a big title at a big regatta. I was sure I wanted all of those things years in advance of when they happened. I made them happen. I was really proud of them. And I felt really good and really at home in my mental world of long-term planning for Big.

I’ve spent this year feeling my world get small around me. The square footage of many day-to-days the size of my little condo. Most travel confined to driving distance. My work life reduced to the 8.5 x 11 of my computer screen. There have been days when I’ve woken up exhausted for no reason and in a lousy mood even though everything is fine. I’ve had to get more comfortable with small goals, setting them and finding satisfaction in them – because some days that’s all I can pull off. Go for a walk around the seaport in the morning. Get my ass to Trader Joe’s so the fridge isn’t empty. Finally get my car inspected so the sticker isn’t three months out of date (pending). Late last week when my eyes were feeling really crummy, my apple watch pinged late in the evening to congratulate me on reaching my “stand goal” – I’d stood up 12 times over the course of the day. Yup. From a big title at a big regatta to standing up from my chair 12 times.

But, I told myself, it was better than 10. And it was better than none.

Tuesday was hard. I was in one Zoom meeting where we got predictable but bad news about a pitch we’d killed ourselves on for months, and another where our team’s been struggling with a project that keeps shape shifting on us and just won’t land. I was embarrassed about how my eyes looked. I did the meetings with my camera off. I watched the tired faces of my teammates, all trying to slog through something hard together, doing their best to make eye contact through separate screens. Doing their best to connect with one another. My little video face box sat up in the right-hand corner. Black. It was a little thing that I thought would make me feel a little better. At the end of the day I realized I hadn’t felt that alone in a long time.

So yesterday I turned my camera back on. I sat in front of my brightest window (backlighting is a very magical thing). I saw my teammates. We cracked jokes and laughed. No one noticed my eyes – or at least no one said anything. This thing I’d grown so self-conscious and worried about turned out not to be a big deal. The difference in how I felt at the end of the day was huge.

The past week has reminded me of the power of little things. I got a text from my friend Tara, someone I’ve rowed with for the last 15 years but haven’t seen in person in months and months. She passed her captain’s test and can row a single on her own. I welled up a little bit when I read it on my phone – both the milestone of it, and the fact that she wanted to tell me as soon as it happened. I spent a few days out on Nantucket with my friend Jules, another buddy I haven’t seen in more than a year. We nerded out on brand positioning and audience segmentation studies, got sandwiches from the farm, and watched the sun set over the ocean. I had a picnic with my dad at Brooksby Farm after a disappointing doctor’s visit. He made us ham and cheese sandwiches on soft bread with no toppings – Sheehans do not do toppings on our food. He took me over to see my sister, her husband, and their dog just before they headed back to New York. My sister told me my eyes really didn’t look that bad and I shouldn’t worry about it. My dad told me I would be okay. And I believed them.

People have made lots of analogies about 2020, trying to inject a sense of logic or levity into this horror show of a year. To me, I think 2020 might be a pair of gunked up eyeballs. You wake up one day and think, how did this happen? It hurts and it’s scary. All the time. Not even the experts seem to know what’s happening or what to do about it. Setbacks are constant. I know it’s not going to be like this forever. It feels like it’s going to be like this forever.

And when I cut myself off from my friends and family to hide the fact that I’m struggling, it doesn’t make anything better.

So. At 9am my Zoom camera’s going on. At 5pm I’m going to see my work team at our favorite dive across the street. At 8pm I’m going to have a fancy dinner in Back Bay. Despite what will be gross overindulgence at said dinner, I’m gonna get my ass and my eyeballs out of bed in the morning and into my boat. A handful of little, wonderful things. A 24-hour game plan. And one small goal I’ve decided to focus on the whole time and feel good about when I achieve it: just don’t scratch at it.