The glasses you'll never see me wear

I wrote about my first eye exam, which overall was a fairly pleasant experience. I mean, the upside is that my sight is actually not horrible for my age. It's just that inside-arm's-length to deal with, but especially later in the day. So once I got the new glasses, a 0.25 diopter affair, I was excited at the difference they made when I was doing NYT puzzles on my phone before bed. But the enthusiasm somewhat turned to frustration.

The obvious thing is that I can't see anything further than arm's length from me while wearing them, which I expected. What I didn't realize is how, even at such a low correction rate, everything else is so blurry. In practice, if I need to see anything I'm not holding, I end up Chuck Schumer-ing them, always looking over the top. Or if I get up, I have to just take them off. Maybe a better analogy is Sally in When Harry Met Sally, though she's got the old-lady string, hanging off of her neck. It's just such a specific use case that also happens to interfere with every other possible use case. That annoys me.

The other thing is that if I'm working on my laptop, most of the day I can see it fine, and in lap or table situations, there's no problem. Ditto for my desktop, which involves 24" screens that are plenty far away. But then there's another bedtime situation. My eyes are tired enough that normal distance isn't intolerable, but it would benefit from a little correction. To be fair, the doctor warned me about this, but I already find it challenging to have a thing on my face for any length of time (it might be an autism thing, I hate sunglasses too), so I asked to stick with the primary use. But it means that in those late hours, I need to bring the machine closer to me with the glasses, which bunches up my arms and it's just awkward.

The biggest problem though is that, if the lights are on in the room, my eyes are still trying to account for my peripheral vision, meaning they're trying to bring that into focus. This gives me headaches and I have to bail. If the lights are off and it's just my screen surrounded by darkness, there's no problem.

So I'm in a place where I love how well I can see again, in that short range at night, but annoyed at all of the situations around it. I'm being slightly dramatic, because I'm learning to adapt. It's just angst that I have to adapt at all. It might be the universe telling me to stop with the screens at night.