A Small Life Gets Big
just like that [snap]
Some writers cast a wide net and tell stories that span years, decades, or even centuries with characters traveling between multiple continents. Some writers focus in, in, and further in, to the smallest of things, the minutiae of daily living, and weave a tale from the miniscule. As I write this, it is the beginning of May 2026, and I’ve been living and working (and trying to write) right there: amidst the small stuff. So much goddamn small stuff.
Small stuff often includes the most boring things ever: researching health insurance policies and doing the math to find out the smartest way to pay for things like braces and prescriptions, filling out forms for field trips, trying to figure out how to transfer retirement funds from an old job to a Roth IRA, setting up an online account for HSA dollars, packing endless snack bags for an endless number of baseball games, and considering things like finding time to vacuum out the van and scrub the grout in the shower.
Would you like to read a Substack about shower grout? The grout is turning a weird orange color. Should I write an essay on water issues and town filtration systems?
Wait, where are you going?
“I’m not in a very exciting phase,” I told my co-worker this past week. “And I’m definitely not the star of my own life. At best, I’m a supporting cast member.”
After I said this, we shared a beat of silence, a moment of sustained eye contact, and I realized just how sad that statement sounded. Or did it? (It definitely sounded sad to my co-worker who doesn’t have children and loves every minute of it.)
Sure, Chip and I do things like work to pay for rooms at chain hotels in places like Marlboro, Mass so we can do things like watch a kids’ tournament baseball game on a sunny, 95 degree day, slowly withering away from dehydration, shedding our papery skin in the hot sun like snakes in the desert, but a fulfilled life includes (or even centers around) helping others, whether it be the young, the old, the unwell, or the athletes.
[My co-worker waves to me from the Uber that drives him and his fiance to the airport so they can catch a flight to a dreamy vacation destination.]
Sure, I just spent five minutes googling why grout turns orange (too much iron in the water), but the small stuff is the good stuff, the real meat and potatoes of life. Chop wood, carry water. Plus, I’ve had my turn: thanks to my family, my eyes have seen the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basilica, La Sagrada Familia. Now it’s time to order groceries, pick them up, haul the bags of groceries inside, unpack them one by one, and cut up the strawberries before they go bad. ‘Tis the season!
I’ve been working extra shifts at the library, and each shift includes thirty minutes of what’s called Shelf Reading*: you make sure each book is in the correct order according to the Dewey Decimal System (we use this as opposed to the Library of Congress classification). 801 comes before 801.1 and 801.1 comes before 801.1b and 801.1b comes before 801.1c, etc. Then you make sure all of the books are flush with the edge of the shelf, not sitting at varying depths, looking like a set of crooked teeth. We only shelf read for a half hour at a time because any more than that can cause eye strain.
[*Click here for a riveting video from ‘Between the Stacks’ of the Indian Trails Public Library. You’re welcome!]
When I am shelf reading, I find myself muttering quietly, “754.2zf, 754.2zfr, 754.2zg…” sounding like a patient in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’ This task made it official: the only way my life’s activities could get any smaller would be if I worked in a laboratory with my face pressed up against the eyepieces of a microscope.
At approximately 9:32 p.m. on Monday evening, I was setting up the auto-checkout instructions at the Circulation Desk and getting ready to make the second announcement over the library’s PA system that we were closing in five minutes when the front door opened and a student poked his head in.
