One

My first answer would be to use logic. Figure out what the problem is. Determine a solution. Rationally lay out a plan of action. Implement it.

The problem with this is that I don’t follow plans well – let me rephrase. Plans do not approximate reality well. They don’t take into account:

• The fact that when you make the plan, you don’t know everything you’re going to encounter. You can’t fully understand the situation until you’re in the middle of it.
• Often times you have to deal with other people, and they may not fit neatly into your plan.
• You are more efficient at certain times than others and this seems to be sporadic (at least for me). With a solid plan, you often have to do things even when you’re not being very efficient at them, eg you have a headache or are distracted by a fight with a friend or spouse.

Two

The next possibility is emotion. You know, just feel it out and go with what seems like the right thing to do. This has its share of benefits (more action, less thinking, more efficiency of activity because you’re in the moment dealing with things as they come up), but it can also create problems:

• This isn’t so good with deadlines.
• It’s easy to ignore other people and their problems.
• If the problem is complex or requires several steps, you may miss something critical and then have to deal with in a “putting out the fire” method.

Three

Doesn’t it seem like there should be a 3rd way? Something that provides the best of the other options while minimizing their difficulties? Let’s try this:

1. Identify the problem.
2. Lay out a plan to solve the problem. This may or may not be written down, but think it through as best you can. If you do write it down, realize that this is a rough guide, not a rulebook. You don’t actually have to do anything that you write down. This is very important.
3. Do whatever feels right. This is most likely the first thing on your list (if you made one) since you just did it, but the second thing you do may or may not be.

Now you may be asking, how is this different from any other system of problem solving? Well, it’s not really. I mean, it does create a sort of logical structure around emotional efficiency, which is nice but let’s be honest – that’s what most of us do anyway, isn’t it?

I think what I’m really looking for here is something that is not yet defined. Let’s try this:

Three (part the Deux)

What if you could live your life with an awareness of “what needs to be done” (logic), how you’re feeling (emotion), and how anyone else affected by the problem is feeling? What if you could hold that in your head, balance it, and then automatically determine your actions based on it? Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Sound impossible? Sound easy? Maybe you already do this – or think you do. I think I used to do this, but I know that I don’t now. I wonder if I can again?

As I told you before, I think I over did it on my first day. The second day I wore my new glasses for an hour and even that was pushing it, so I back off for awhile – I think my eyes were strained by the first day and really need to recover, so I gave them time until they felt okay again.

Then I started back on the following schedule:

And with the exception of yesterday, where I fell off the train (I think I was just tired). They have felt fine. No serious headaches like before. It takes some concentration to see, but it improves with time.

I even have moments where I can suddenly see REALLY WELL. It’s a little eery, frankly.

So I’m going to keep building slowly and see how it goes. I think there are really two things I’m getting used to here. One is the fact that the world is shaped differently, ie no astigmatism correction. I think this is where the headaches came from. The other is strengthening my eyes so that I can see well with the glasses on.

Since I’m extremely sensitive to not being able to see, I am constantly trying to see better whenever I’m wearing the new glasses, and as they become my regular glasses, I think it will just become easier and easier to see like I’m used to seeing.

Thanks for listening!

I think that I changed my prescription too much, frankly. This is what I did and what it means:

My current prescription:

Pupillary Distance = 65mm

Isn’t it cool that the left eye is the sinister one – it’s so true, isn’t it????

Anyway, the Spherical measurement is how far you have to be corrected all around to bring your eyes back to 20/20. Reading glasses are +1, +2 or whatever, and those of us that are near-sighted get negative numbers (to go with our sinister eye).

Cylindrical and Axis work together to correct astigmatism. Astigmatism means that you need a different prescription in different directions within your eye – it’s also called wonky eye (I made that up). It’s easiest to think of in terms of you things can be blurry up/down or left/right, and so it needs different corrections for each. So, the Cylindrical number represents the amount of additional correction needed along a different axis, and the axis tells what degree angle that other axis runs along. The axis is measured from the 0 degree line in a polar graph – that is, from the right side horizontal line going anti-clockwise. The Cylindrical number actually gets added to the Spherical number to get the full adjustment.

Pupillary Distance (PD) is the distance between your pupils in mm. I guess 63 is normal – I’m close.

Wikipedia has all the ugly details.

So, that’s where I started. I then thought to myself, “Self,” I thought… I don’t seem to have any problems when I don’t wear my glasses (headaches and the like), why don’t I immediately drop the astigmatism component. “That sounds like a fine place to start,” I agreed.

And then I made it worse. I was thinking about how the larger the jumps that I take, the fewer pairs of glasses I’ll have to buy before I can do away with them completely and thought I’d just drop a .25 off the prescription. I mean, it’s a quarter! What’s that doin’? Nothing! Or close to it. You can’t even buy gum for a quarter anymore…

So that’s how I ended up here:

The prescription of my new glasses:

Pupillary Distance = 65mm

Looks bad, right? Well, I guess we’ll find out.

Like I said, yesterday was a little rough. But I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve realized that when I used to get new contacts, they would make the world funny shaped and me a little dizzy for a couple of days. In addition, I’d have to work up to wearing them full time. So that’s what I’m doing now.

An hour a day until it feels good, then we’ll go from there.

On the bright side, I do have to say that as I wear them, it gets easier to see. Also, when I go back to my old glasses, I can see incredibly clearly. I don’t think this is just in comparison to having been blind for 2 1/2 hours, but legitimately better eyesight. Of course, it’s all subjective, right? Well, for now. If I can wear these new glasses full time, I’ll know that I’ve accomplished something.

In the meantime, the world is a little blurry around the edges.

I just ordered new glasses from an online seller. Infathomably, they were $19 (plus shipping). To keep it interesting, I ordered them with a weaker prescription than I probably should have to work on improving my sight and hopefully do away with my glasses altogether over time. Is this a good idea? Tell me what you think.The reason I’m doing this however is that I’ve had success with improving my vision in the past. I first noticed that things got better in college while I was delivering Chinese food for Ho Lee Chow (do you believe it? Anyway…). Within a month of squinting at house numbers in the dark, I found that I became better able to read them. My contacts at the time didn’t quite match my prescription (early contact technology, I guess) and at night, all lights would blur into a long thin streak – it was a pain. However, after a little delivery-driving-sight-therapy, I discovered that I could make the streak go away and vastly improve my night vision.

So, a couple of years later I’d switched to glasses and was driving home on the backroads of Michigan a little bored. (I don’t recommend anyone do this, of course…) I got to thinking about my vision, and decided to try a little experiment. I took off my glasses (keeping them in my right hand and ready to put back on immediately) and tried to focus on the passing road signs. Within ten minutes, I noticed a significant difference in my vision and was excited about it. However, ten minutes also seemed to wear out my eyes, so I put my glasses back on and headed for home (keep in mind, there was noone else on the road, the road was perfectly straight, and I knew it really well – I was being a little incautious, but not much in terms of becoming some form of automotive statistic).

This was fabulous, so I would take my glasses off at different points during the day for short periods of time to ‘exercise’ my eyes. What did I learn? My vision continued to improve. So much so that a couple days into this (literally), I was driving home from work at night and in the seven minutes that it took (glasses on), I had acquired a splitting headache – to the extent that I literally crawled up the stairs to my apartment and went straight to bed without dinner.

The next day, I decided that this was due to the improvement in my vision and began focusing on making my eyesight perfect for the glasses that I was wearing. From that day forward, my prescription has not changed and my eyesight has been perfect. Every once in a while, it will start to blur a little, and I’ll have to focus to bring it back to perfection, but that’s worked great for eight or ten years (I know it was the 90s, but I don’t remember when).

So, when I was practicing hypnotherapy, I did some personal work around my lack of vision and the emotional causes that created it and maintain it that way today. This was very effective and interesting, but didn’t really change how well I can see (incidentally, if it seems a little presumptuous or just downright silly that vision can be improved by resolving some sort of underlying emotional causes for it, I’m with you in spirit. How about we view it from the perspective that whether or not those emotional issues created the visual inacuity that I experience, the therapy still results in the resolution of issues that were affecting my life an a number of ways).

It seemed to me however, that a direct leap from impaired vision to perfect vision was just too much for my brain and/or eyes to handle. That is, I couldn’t function without my glasses even though I fully believed that I could improve my vision over time sufficiently to stop wearing them.

… time passed …

And now I’ve finally done something about it. I ordered these glasses with a weaker prescription. For $19, how can you beat it! I stand to lose very little – I can always just go back to my old glasses and move on with my life, knowing that I’ve failed. But if I succeed, I’m well on the road to no glasses whatsoever, and how exciting would that be?

Anyway, thanks for reading – let me know if you’ve done anything similar or if you just think I’m completely nutso!