Netflix.  Jake is going blind.  Netflix, what did you do?!

If your eyesight sucks and isn’t getting better, I may just have stumbled into your problem.

Terrifying Netflix.  Seriously, I’m almost squinting at the screen right now, typing you this last plaintive warning, from the edge of the grave of my wrung out eyeballs.

This should really be a quick video edit.  I can’t properly emphasize the gravity of this latest discovery, with just words on a page.  (but then the video gear is all the way across town, rush hour traffic, there’s food at home, and so … text will do, for today)

So here is what happened.  The ugly little missteps, leading up to crappy focus.

I’ve been working through a business proposal the last week or so.  Interesting stuff.  Adds a couple hours to the close-up but just temporarily.  Plus of course, the regular close-up for business, and the close-up for endmyopia time.  Then an hour here and there, researching things about the upcoming move.  Because I’m getting old and uncool, not totally winging every last detail of everything.

And the endmyopia Facebook group.  Figure another 20 minutes or so a day.  

All these things have been adding up.  I feel like they really push my daily ciliary load to the limit, and I’ve been trying to compensate with longer outdoor walks.  Plus I keep thinking, kitesurfing will add hours and hours more outdoor time, coming in just a few weeks.  

No big deal.

But then.  Kittehs, I’ve got this iPad mini thing, for no apparent reason.  And then a friend really talked up “Better Call Saul”, some TV show.  And it’s been raining all evening, every day lately.  And I’d never use a torrent site, but if I did, it’s been shut down recently.  So totally randomly, I pulled up Netflix, and got the free trial membership.

Free trial membership, of all the doom.

Binge watching that show, till midnight every night, after getting home.  Waking up in the morning with blurry vision, getting straight to e-mail and the extra close-up hours.  Getting home in the evening, binge watching more Netflix. 

I can’t see a damn thing, right now.

I can walk it out, get back to regular vision, with a solid hour walk.  But this is something I never realized before, there is a very clear sensation of a threshold where it feels like your ciliary wants to just “pop back” into the spasm.  Normally my eyesight would return to normal after an hour walk, and stay that way.  Now all it takes is a little screen time, to be right back to ciliary spasm.  Very uncool.  

I’ve been so much of the eye guru for so long, that I haven’t tried some of the habits that you, darling reader kitteh, may be using as part of your daily life.  I’ve been disconnected from the realities of most normal consumers, with years of pushing to balance distance vision time, with close-up time.  

After just a week of this extra close-up and normal Western lifestyle I’m realizing that you may hit a threshold beyond which you’re really close to ciliary spasm, and you might be fighting an ongoing uphill battle that’ll be hard to ever win.

An hour walk isn’t going to fix what I’ve got going on right now, with my eyes.

The problem goes back to how easy and tempting some of that close-up really is.  What can compete with a couch, a fresh Banana and honey smoothie, and on demand Netflix?   That’s a serious question.  If you have the luxury of saying “oh screw this” and tell your family that you’re all moving to the beach in Vietnam and learning to surf, that’s one thing.  But if your job sucks and your co-habitation scenario is depressing, you might reach for that iPad and Netflix in the evening, like any other drug induced escape from reality.  I can talk about distance vision and the benefits of 20/20 till I’m blue in the face, but it won’t change someone elses reality, of close-up just being the best option.

From my experience, knowing my eyes, feeling my eyes, I know I need at least a solid weekend (or just “a few days” since weekends don’t really matter here), to get rid of this threshold spasm.  And then I’ll have to be careful to be serious to not start adding a half hour here, an hour there of close-up.  And definitely, not Netflix for three hours at night.  That’s the kicker of just too much close-up.  

Where does that leave us, for this (possibly excessively frank and unfiltered) post?

Maybe it goes back to what we talk about a lot.  Learn to understand your eyes.  Get a weekend camping, compare your centimeters, and your real distance vision, to a regular work week.  Get to know the sense of what a ciliary spasm feels like, how it affects your eyesight.  Start being sensitive to where you go past that threshold, and your eyes just want to lock up.  Look at the bigger picture, of what activities or hobbies may make distance vision more fun and useful, besides just outdoor walks you do because you should.  Is there something you may do, instead of Netflix, and look forward to?

Or maybe it just means that we finally need to get on to starting that beach commune.  Mandatory kite surfing lessons for all commune-kittehs.

Cheers!

-Jake