The weekend before Christmas, my oldest child and I took a weekend trip to a marching band camp. We had a late flight with some delays and a shockingly long shuttle to our rental car. We drove for about an hour in the snow and got to the hotel after midnight. I was very ready to lie down.

Post-pandemic hotels are very different now. Most of the time, I can pick a specific room and download my room key. I had company on this trip, but often I am alone. I get the highest floor. I pick the room farthest from the elevator. I look forward to the isolation of digital interaction and a faraway room.

I slept as well as a hotel bed allows. I dropped my son off at camp and returned to the hotel. I took a walk, had a snack, and sat down to write. It was a standard hotel, but the view was really cool. Looking out the room window from the desk, I saw a well-maintained historic downtown in a tiny town in Ohio.

The wind chill was zero, and the snow layered everything. The town had Christmas decorations, old offices, factories, and a clock tower. With the sun shining, my view was a living postcard.

My process involved a fair amount of staring. Write a few lines, take in the scenery, then go back to the writing. My screen blurred a bit. That happens after long sessions, but I was only an hour in. I pressed on.

My eyesight got even more fuzzy. The letters on the screen were warping. I hadn’t been on the computer long enough to feel this level of fatigue. I powered through, but it was getting worse.

I turned to Dr. Google, which was a serious mistake. At this point, I could barely read my phone. The glimpse of potential diagnoses was terrifying. The fear of losing my eyesight grabbed me. I love writing. I need my eyes for my job. How would I commute? This thought grounded me in more present horrors. I was twenty miles from my kid. Sixty miles from the airport. How were we going to get home?

I scrolled a bit more and saw “snow blindness.” Snow blindness is new to me. I’ve never been around snow for a prolonged period of time. It is basically a sunburn on your eye from the sun reflecting on the snow. It can happen from water, sand, and other sources of high levels of UV light.

Spiraling about what might be did not change what was. I had snow blindness before I knew what that was. The fear-based planning fueled anxiety, but did not change my circumstances. The fear brought forward pain from a story about a non-existent “future.” I needed to reset to the reality of what really was. Feeding the fears didn’t help, and upon reflection, they weren’t very realistic options anyway.

Am I planning or spiraling? Is this fear, or urgency, even realistic? What is the smallest next step I can take that actually helps?

Be curious, be kind, be whole, do good things.