“Do you get seasick?” Not exactly the sort of question you expect from an optometrist fitting you for frames. “Because if you do, you might want to put in a stock of seasick pills”.
“Oh. Great!” I muttered. You see, I had finally succumbed. My arms were no longer long enough to hold my books, and my computer screen was sitting on another desk beyond arms length. I had to get bifocals (in my parlance) or multifocal lenses according to the optometrist.
They showed me mocked up pictures of what my vision would be like with different priced lenses. I plumped for the ones that cost the national debt of a third world country in the vague hope the seasickness wouldn’t be too extreme.
The day finally arrived and the disgustingly chirpy young assistant popped the new glasses onto my head. “Can you read this” she asked thrusting a cardboard document in my hands. “Well I would be able to if the words stopped dancing around like Britney Spears”.
“Don’t worry- it will settle down in a few days. But until it does, don’t drive with them on, watch out so you don’t walk into walls and whatever you do, don’t walk down stairs with them on. Oh … and don’t go back to your old glasses, it will make the inevitable transition twice as long”.
“Oh goodie” I thought “I’m moving into the ground floor of my house for a few weeks and walking everywhere”.
For those of you young enough not to need multifocals let me explain what it is like.You are supposed to move your head like a laughing clown to try and find the right focus point on your glasses when you look around. No longer the joy of simply reading a broadsheet newspaper – I now looked like a baby bird trying to find its mother on each page. When you look out of the side of your lenses, you get the same experience as when you look into the mirrors on Coney Island – everything is slightly warped (and not in a good way).
So how is it going? Well the first day everything was peachy – I did everything I was supposed to and felt right chuffed with myself that I had survived. Piece of cake.
Day 2 and things went downhill. My eyes rebelled much like a kid who loves their first day at school, only to cry on day 2 when reality set in. Yes, I do get seasick. So for the past week a ginger beer bottle has been my constant companion in the vain hope of fending off the woozy feeling.
As the days clicked over, I now have moments of clarity when my fingers can once again find the right keys on the computer keyboard, and the screen looks once again normal. Yes, these moments are increasing in duration, but my eyes need a nanna nap every afternoon in order to be able to survive the evening. I am exhausted by the end of each day. And I forgot to take off my new glasses when I climbed the ladder and hopped onto the roof to install the Christmas lights – made the experience more terrifying than the big thrill rides at Dreamworld, but hey the lights look great!
Yes, there have been times when I have dropped back into using the old glasses in order to meet a particularly pressing deadline – but they are reducing in frequency. I know by going back to old habits things will take longer – but reality steps in and clients come first.
Seeing the world through different eyes is much like learning any new skill. You start with conscious incompetence where you know you have absolutely no clue what you are doing. You then move onto conscious competence where you have some vague control over your new skills (as long as you concentrate really really hard). You finally move onto unconscious competence, where you now know what you are doing and don’t have to think about it in order to do it.
You have moments when you are a master and other moments when you crash and burn. You have to relearn how to do the simplest things, and everything takes twice as long as it used to. You burn with envy over people who cheerily tell you they were perfect first go, and you fantasise about giving up (but know you never will). Every skill worth learning has a similar journey. But it is learning from the journey that is the most useful part of the process.
Roll on unconscious competence I say. Until then … yes I will be a tad slower and there will be more typos than normal … but the end result will be worth it. And if you see me looking like a bobble head toy at that local shops when I am trying to read a price ticket … pop over … pat my hand … and remind me that in a few days this will all be but a memory.
Ingrid Cliff
We put your business into words
Heart Harmony – Freelance writer
