Off-topic randomness, of the potential consequences of starting to see the world more clearly.

Myopia control.  It creeps into your life, becoming less short sighted.

First you just learn things about vision biology and optics and the difference between lazy (but profitable) symptom treatment, and actual health.  About so-called medicine, vs. science.

Then you start making 20/20 gains.  Making small habit changes.  And really what it boils down to after you get through the basic learning curve, is fixing your screen addiction.  It’s easy to just reach for a screen and load up some Netflix or some Instagram or some Youtubes or Facebooks.  Consume passively.  

Hey, even an eye guru does plenty of it.

But those habit changes, not to be underestimated.  First maybe you just went bowling one night, instead of staying home.  And then you met a couple guys into archery.  Or waterpolo.  Or you realized a river runs through town and there’s a rowing club (rowing FTW).  You get a little bit more insistent on leaving at the office at 5PM and not working late.  You slowly start to get more into reclaiming personal time to pursue the things you’re slowing discovering out there.

Outside of the cage of work and screens.

Trust me, it happened to me too.  Slowly and over time.  I’m not the type to paraglide and kitesurf and randomly go move to Nepal or Cambodia.  And yes a notable part of it was a level of financial freedom … but I still didn’t do much with all that till the eye habits started pulling me out of the proverbial matrix.

Now the habit is an itch, as much part of personality as anything.  After a month or two of same-same routines, some wee part of the brain starts complaining.  Like the dog that needs to go for a walk.  Come on, Jake.  Let’s gtfo of here for a little bit.  Go to the airport Jake.  See that backpack in the corner?  Put some stuff in it.  Some cash and a passport.  Baby mama is used to this.  After a month or two, Jakey disappears for a while.  Goes off wandering the earth.

Not my style really, the unfamiliar.  I like familiarity and routines as much as the next guy.  While I was wearing glasses in particular, happy to be confined to familiar things.  Think about this!

Skyscanner.com, also.  A dangerous site to poke around on, when you’ve got free time.  The other day a ridiculously cheap flight to Kiev, Ukraine popped up.  Direct flight from Bangkok.  Something like $200.  Nevermind that McBeardly was in Yangon at the time.  Seemed reasonable enough to make a quick stop in Hong Kong for some business and then fly to Bangkok for some errands anyway, and then just take that flight to totally new things.

“Errands” (aka the batbike stashed away in Bangkok).

Ukraine.  Imagining old cobble stone roads and some proper Eastern European food bits.  Tall blonde girls.  (wait what?  who said that!)

And there’s some business to be sorted in Sofia and in Budapest.  Hungary and Bulgaria.  Investigating the map says, squiggly lines.  Trains make these routes interesting.  A small backpack, conducive to hopping off trains at stations randomly if the scenery looks interesting.  The magic of Airbnb and Google maps.  Just go be completely lost for a while in Romania.  Why not?

Obsessive that your favorite eye guru is, the bag is thoroughly analyzed after every trip and optimized and tweaked and minimalized.  Two shirts, underwear, a pair of shorts that double as swimming trunks.  A compressible warm jacket.  Laptop.  Upon destination arrival stop at the local convenience store, buy a small pack of detergent, use the plastic bag to soak clothes in the sink in the evening, wake up with fresh clothes every day.  

All you could ever need, to be anywhere.

All tiny things that cumulatively move you away from being that passive screen consumer zombie.  Little by little, actively seeing your surroundings, may change what you choose as your surroundings.

Wake up one day and realize a decade has gone by.  What used to be myopic-office-drone you, is now a whole new animal, with new skills and insights, and many experiences and stories.  Seeing clearly, glasses long forgotten.  You hardly noticed how slowly things changed to where you are today.

I may have written before that this sort of thing is long term entirely feasible for most anyone reading here.  I obsessively track my spending.  I remember having lived in Vietnam a few years back, with total expenses of $400 per month.  Living a block from the beach in a cute beach town, including rent, motorbike, eating every meal out, coffee shop twice a day, no scrimping.  The extended version of running from screen addictions and instead taking long rides into the highlands of that fascinating country.

But I can’t do that Jake, you say.  It’s ok.  This isn’t a template.  It’s just an example.  One path of many.  Even for me unexpected procreation moment changed things.  But the better part of habits eventually always resurface.  Once you’re used to better things than screens, you’ll find a way to get there again.

And quite possibly eye gurus are no good at putting the premise of seeing clearly into the distance, into words.  Seeing clearly, far away, and wanting to go there, and the process of getting there, may affect how you see things, and things you go see.  What makes me passionate about endmyopia isn’t the mechanics of vision improvement, but the possibilities the larger practice has to your life as a whole.

Keep making those 20/20 gains!

Cheers,

-Jake