Day 13 of 30: No more glasses

Jezuz, I can’t believe it’s only been 13 days into this experiment. Now I’m starting to wonder how much hormones are involved in this eyesight thing, and/or how much they can work against your morale.

I have stopped using hormonal contraceptives, as of a couple days ago. So I think my quick change in mood today about this project has more to do with hormonal changes than anything else. I read a British study from like 2008 that showed women were more attracted (by scent) to men of similar genetics when on oral contraceptives. No thank you.

So, today, I went a bit too long without eating and ended up buying a crappy “oatmeal raisin” cookie (no visible oatmeal nor raisins in the cookie, as discovered after the purchase) and a piece of coffee cake for lunch at my least favorite local coffee shop near the BART station. Which probably kicked off an insulin spike and crash which led to a dinner of pasta and ice cream for a midnight snack.

Which leads me now to a tearful, reflective mood, and a slight, generally negative disposition.

Bearing that in mind, I did not sense any real vision improvement today. I did my eye exercises tonight (while trying to recover from a beat-up hammer-throwing spine) and noticed some tearing-up during certain exercises. Kind of a sign they were working?

Enough of today already. On to better nutrition and mood tomorrow, hopefully!

Epic Fail

Got a law slapped in my face
After it was presented to me so
Beautifully
I ignored it
Did it my way
The old
Ignorant way
Expected different results
Then cried when communication broke down
Why can’t I take my own advice?

Day 12 of 30: No more glasses

Survived an outdoor music festival for one day. Had a great time dancing and not feeling any judgments from people’s eyes. Very freeing. Worked the eyes trying to see objects clearly on stage. Slacked on muscular eye exercises. Did most of the before tonight but not all of them.

Bad Timing

I met a perfect ten
The new man of my dreams.
I don’t even know if he’s real.
That look,
That moment,
That comes but so rare,
Took a chance,
Launched my heart among stars.
But the baby was there,
I didn’t know what it meant
And his words
Like a red river flowed.
And the fire kept burning
Long after the bar closed
Then all that was said
Was I’m sorry.

Day 10 of 30: No more glasses

I’m starting to wonder if this isn’t more a test of positive thinking and paradigm shifts.

Riding my bike 30 minutes to work, about 10 minutes in I’m starting to hate everything being slightly blurry again, and questioning my own good judgement for doing this stupid experiment in the first place.

Then, I relax. Change my mind. Imagine as vividly as possible that my eyes could instantly see everything clearly and crisply, and, as I relax, my vision does improve. Slightly, but noticeably. My jaw also relaxes and starts to feel sore (I’ve been chewing a pack of gum this week).

I wonder that if I could just accept a new paradigm -that my eyes are perfectly healthy and capable of perfect sight, if I could trick my brain into using another section or new wiring schematic or something to help me see better.

When I imagine that my eyes work perfectly, I can actually feel them trying to work perfectly. I have to physically relax the eye muscles to give them breaks when they strain, but they are working. I wonder just how much stock there can be in the fact of exercising just the 3 pairs of eye muscles to improve eyesight. I wonder if those eye muscles are at all responsible for the overall shape of the eye, therefore causing distortion if one of the pairs is not optimally functioning.

I notice that the eye exercise that bothers/strains my eyes the most is “drawing” lines from the floor up to the ceiling in the far left and right sides of each eye. Second to that one I suppose is “drawing” circles on the ceiling, looking up.

So there are 2 things going on that I can observe. My eyes themselves seem to strain/bulge to see distant objects, especially if I focus on staying relaxed in the face and the mind. This feels like exercise, and exercise tells the brain that it needs to change, so this makes me feel a little more optimistic.

Secondly, I am doing many eye exercises that do not involve focus, just controlled movement of the eyes. The only way I could imagine this improving vision is by slightly changing the tension on the eyeball itself, AND by bringing circulation to worked parts of the eye at the attachment sites.

I went to the big Safeway grocery store in Potrero tonight and just for fun tried to look for organic wheat pasta (unsuccessfully, haha). That was an excellent eye exercise in focusing on the overhead isle labels and then individual items. I may just start doing that daily or every other day for the practice! It was quite challenging.

To science, and positive thinking…

Day 9 of 30: No More Glasses

It’s terrifying going out at night with blurry vision. It reminds me of the time I had traveled to Pakistan in planes, got out of the airport in Karachi, and was blinded for a good 45 minutes. I couldn’t see due to the light level change. No fun stepping foot onto foreign soil without your vision.

Today my eyesight adapted some after walking outside for a few minutes at night. People’s faces still totally unreadable, went to fashion showing and out dancing at club. Did 2×100 near/far today plus normal routine.

Not feeling less blind. There must be a more scientific way to do the near/far exercises so that improvement can be monitored.

Day 8 of 30: No more glasses

Whether or not my vision is improving, it seems not wearing glasses/contacts is making my romantic life exponentially better day by day. Ironic that I attract even better-looking men when I can’t actually see them clearly. Pause for your joke. Ok. Possible my blurry vision boosts my self-confidence and deactivates my give-a-damn. N-E-way…

Having said that, I did do 2×100 near/far eye exercises today in addition to the other 13 exercises, vast improvement over yesterday. As housemate R said, “Even God took one day out of seven off!”. Love ego-pumping enablers in my life. Me and God, on the same page.

One online test I took said my vision was 20/20 in my left eye and 20/100 in my right, which would be great if it were true, seeing as I’ve started at 20/50 (L) and 20/300 (R), respectively. Kinda doubt the validity of that test, however.

I will hold fast and keep on until end of the month.

Communication, Miscommunication, Busyness, Major Malfunction

Retrograde is in the air and people around me (including myself) are
dealing heavily with communication issues.

I had a thought that general busy-ness of people nowadays is causing
communication problems. Communication takes time. A LOT of time. You
have to train someone to properly interpret what you say in order to
get your needs met. This can probably take many many hours upon months
to understand what a person means when they say something.

The more emotion that is brought into communication, the greater the
chance for errors in interpretation. My high school choir teacher, Mr.
Peter Park, once made the extremely astute observation that: “In the
void of communication, people connect dots in the most pathological
ways possible.” His remedy was to “communicate without ceasing.” This
is especially important in the midst of emotions. If someone is left
in a state of confusion, he/she has only to rely on emotional data to
interpret what the other person means. Emotional data is based on
fears/hopes, which are probably wrong about 80% of the time. So when
you do not perfectly spell out what you NEED to another person, they
are left with their own assumptions about themselves and you to fill
in the blanks.

Never assume a person knows exactly what you mean. Many times people
will nod heads without exactly knowing what you mean. Only through
repeated exposure to similar information with observed outcomes can a
person accurately interpret what you mean.

Don’t take it personally when someone doesn’t understand you. Do not
assume that others don’t love you if they don’t understand something
you were trying to communicate. Communication is a NEVER-ENDING
ITERATIVE PROCESS. My brain will NEVER work the same way yours does,
no matter how much time I spend around you.

Communication takes TIME. And it takes a willingness to admit errors
and vulnerabilities. I have found, for example, that immigrants
necessarily place a large importance on being UNDERSTOOD. If you think
about it, being UNDERSTOOD is critical to SURVIVAL. If you cannot meet
your needs, or get your needs met by others, you will not prosper. So
an immigrant already has a handicap entering a community without full
communication abilities in basic language skills, so they can be
especially frightened if they are not understood by someone, knowing
deeply what communication can do for them.

Kindness goes a long way in letting someone know you did not
understand them. Blame is useless. Removing all emotion from the
process is key to getting results. “I did not understand you. This is
how I could have understood what you meant. Next time would you
_________?”

We must all slow down and invest the patience it takes to learn how
each other thinks and operates if we are to get our needs met and meet
others’ needs.