kfitz

Focus

I’ve been wearing glasses with progressive lenses for a few years now, since it became clear that no form of contact lens-based correction was going to work anymore. (I tried multifocal lenses, and found that the sweet spot for my focus was about eight feet away. I do very little that requires me to look at things that are eight feet away. I also tried the thing where you correct one eye for distance and the other one for reading, and your brain is supposed to make up the difference. My brain handled that okay as long as I wasn’t the least bit tired, which was way less frequent than I’d like.)

Anyhow, I adjusted to the progressives quickly enough after a few false starts. But during the pandemic, as I found myself strapped to my computer most of the day, I started developing a bit of neck pain from tilting my head back to exactly the right angle to get the spot on the screen aligned with the right spot in my glasses. I said something about it to my eye doctor last summer, and he gave me a prescription for computer glasses. Which I promptly put on the shelf next to my desk and ignored.

About a month or so ago, I’d had it. I ordered a pair of frames online (exactly the same frames as one of my pairs of progressives, because I did not have the patience to actually try things on) with the computer lenses in them.

And they’re amazing. First off, because they’re a much lighter prescription than my correct-all-the-distances glasses, they’re literally lighter too, so I’m way less prone to the headaches produced by the weight of my glasses on my nose. And because I can see my two computer screens clearly through any point in the lenses, I’m having to do way less to contort myself, which is a relief.

But there’s another benefit that I hadn’t considered at all when I bought these. The focal distance for these glasses is roughly between 18 inches and four feet, which means that everything other than my computer screens is rendered in a soft blur. Which means these glasses are like focus mode for your face: they reduce external distractions and increase the possibilities for concentration. Which is unexpected and kind of amazing.

The only problem is that I forget I’m wearing them, and so will often get up from the computer and experience the rest of the world in a bit of a haze. But then, given the rest of the world, it could be worse.

Webmentions

No replies yet.