Long Nights, Bright Eyes: Looking Alert after Working Late

If you follow Latina Uprising on Instagram (and you really should because the community on there is so awesome!), then you saw my post last night about having to work late. I really have no room to complain because in all the years I’ve been practicing, I’ve rarely had to stay extremely late or come in during the weekends. Of course that is the trade off with working in public interest; the money is low, but we aren’t chained to our desks and can expect a better work life balance. But in every legal practice there will be some late nights and the last thing I like to do is roll into work the next day with puffy, bleated, tired or blood-shot eyes–all real risks when you don’t get a good night’s sleep!

Aside from just not look aesthetically pleasing, it can be distracting and no one wants an attorney that looks beat–that just doesn’t scream, “winner!” So what are some measures to fix this emergency?

Here’s what I do when I know that I’m in for a long night of work– I prep myself for some serious eye care that night and morning:

One. Take contacts out. I keep spare glasses and contact/solution/drops at work and if it’s past 7pm, the contacts come out and I start working with my glasses.  This helps relieve some eye strain, and helps my eyes breathe a little more, which will help reduce redness.

Two. Apply serious eye cream. I’m not sure if I’ve found my holy grail eye cream yet, but I’m really loving my Ole Henriksen’s eye gel so far. However, any cream/gel that’s soothing, cool, & helps to decrease puffiness will work. You can even go natural and use actual cucumber. Just something to help destress during the night while you’re actually sleeping will make a big difference.
Three. Apply Ice. I will admit some days I’ve been desperate and have applied ice directly to my face—real talk, I can be a bit extreme when it comes to my looks. But for normal people, an eye gel mask is preferable. I pop it in the freezer while I’m eating breakfast and then wear it for 15 minutes. The intense cold helps bring down any puffy problems all over my face–from my eyes, to above my brows and cheekbones.

Four. Concentrate on the bags. If you have baggy problems like me then this extra step may be worth it. After the mask, I may apply under eye gel pads. I discovered gel pads a year ago, and they are my go-to beauty product for bright eyes. It just gives the under eye a punch of concentrated moisturizer and soothing serum to fixes a big problem.

Depending on how bad it looks I may skip some steps, but overall I really try to alleviate the stress from my face so that I can get to work looking alert, refreshed, and ready to go.