Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Legwork and Life, week of 2/21/17



So this happened.  I am, unfortunately, still wearing those until I can get a new pair in early March.  This pair of glasses has served me for at least 7 years, I believe.  I'm unlikely to find another pair of rimless, or even half-rimless glasses, sadly.  That's actually why this pair has been in service for so long.  Unfortunately, they can only take so much (ab)use, so they've finally broken in a way I can't fix.  The whole world looks askew now.  (The lack of weight on the one side makes the glasses tilt.)

I spent a half hour or so trying to live without my glasses when they first broke.  It was pretty frustrating, actually.  Every light source turns into glowy circular blurs, like the lens flares in photography.  And every piece of text that isn't less than a foot from my face is irrelevant.  That includes my computer screen.  I am literally so myopic that I can't use my computer without glasses.  I can see general shapes out to a reasonable enough distance, so in theory I could avoid walking into walls, and navigate around my apartment.  But anything fine detail is out.  Which actually means no driving, since I need to see the street signs, and, say, pedestrians on the side of the road. 

Hopefully the other arm/leg/whatever thing will hold out for another week or so. 

I think I've overloaded myself in the events/responsibilities department.  I'd kind of hoped that the having fun bit might help alleviate some of the stress of that.  But I don't think I'm good enough at fun for that, or maybe the entire theory was wrong.  I prefer hope to despair, so I'm going to choose to believe that I'm just not good at enough at fun yet. 

A brief update on Project Fun.  I've found one thing that's generally enjoyable, but it unfortunately consumes a lot of my attention and so I can't multitask it with something productive.  This means, unfortunately, that I have to limit it pretty thoroughly.  It's a podcast called My Brother, My Brother, and Me.  Each episode is between 35 and 55 minutes long, and it's an advice show, often sarcastic advice, by three brothers.  Fortunately for me, it's been going since 2011, so my otherwise limited supply of entertainment still has hundreds of hours of backlog.  (Note: if you start listening to this podcast based on this recommendation, please do start your listening at episode 50 or even the most recent episode.  Like Star Trek TNG, it takes a bit to get into the swing of itself and become really good.)

Finding this one thing that is generally entertaining has revealed to me how much of my regular life really isn't.  I'm partly fine with that, because I don't think life is about having fun all the time.  But it's also kind of a sad realization, because this shows me that I don't really enjoy a lot of what I do with my time. 

I think part of the problem is that if I'm going to notice I'm having fun, or perhaps even have fun at all, I seem to have to be comfortable.   And I have an anxiety disorder, so... not exactly an easy feat.  The podcast has a relatively fair chance, because I can listen to that wherever I am, and that is often at home, where I only have to contend with myself.  And while the inside of my skull can be an awful place, it's one factor to contend with, rather than the dozens I deal with while out and among other people. 

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