Saturday, August 23, 2008

I Knew It Would Happen

Getting old, that is .... I'm 39 and almost to 40 in December. I get NO sympathy from my wife about it, by the way.

I've been noticing within the last week that I've been experiencing some near-vision focusing jumps ... nothing serious, but certainly a problem for what I do for a living (technical writing and editing), and I had also noticed that as of late, my night vision, which used to be really, really good, was starting to degrade a little bit. Given I commute to my job and on most days, I'm driving there right at dawn or (especially later in the fall) near dusk or right around dark, I chalked it up to age.

It turns out I was partially right. There's a specific vision problem brought on my excessive computer use called (ta-da!) Computer Vision Syndrome. You really see it in jobs where you have excessive (heavy) computer work or stare at a screen for hours, such as technical editing.

Given the symptoms, it was time to stop in and talk to the eye doc about my options. Lauren has already made the jump to bifocals ... was it time for me as well?

Not really ... the doc doesn't want to go that far. Instead, I'm going with a pair of reading glasses.

Why is it that I suddenly feel like Jim Kirk around the time of Wrath of Khan? "Well, Bones, these are ... charming." I'm sure this will be the same experience for me. I hope.