There have been a lot of things going on, many things I want to talk about but don’t have the energy to do or don’t think it’s the right time to do so, so apologies if you miss my messages and such.

I’ve been stressed for a multitude of reasons, but I wanted to talk out loud a bit about a worry I’ve been kind of avoiding recently: My eyesight. Nothing drastic, worry not!

Well, time comes for us all eventually, doesn’t it?

My eyesight has never been exceptional, particularly growing up. I remember first noticing in sixth grade when my math teacher would write a quote on the board that we had to copy at the start of class. She always wrote it in red marker: I remember it as clear as day. Or, as unclear as day, as I should say: I couldn’t read the dang board. I squinted a lot, but eventually got it down. I didn’t know what was going on: I didn’t have that problem with black or blue. Was this something everyone struggled with? Did red markers just suck? To this day, I try to avoid writing in red for this reason.

I told my mom about this and she suggested we get my eyes checked. Sure enough, I was in need of glasses. I’ll never forget when I first put them on and saw the world. Everything was so… clear. It was like I was being introduced to life for the first time. Was this what everyone saw? How did I not know this was possible? I know it’s cliche, but I marveled at being able to see individual leaves and pines on the trees on the drive home.

Fast-forward to my time in Korea, and I decide to get laser eye surgery. Korea knows how to do cosmetic surgeries, and Lasik was something they were very skilled at and comfortable with in the before-times of 2010. I did it right before my summer holiday, so I wouldn’t miss any classes. They gave me a big stuffed bear to hold, and politely told me in Korean to hold onto the bear and squeeze it, if I liked. The experience is surreal.

Trigger warning for eye laser stuff. Skip the paragraph if you don’t want none of this.

You get eye drops that numb your eyes. Good, right? Then, because of the numbing agent, your eyes lose focus. Makes sense - they don’t need your peeper dilating all over the place. They peel back a thin protective layer from over your iris and pupil, so as not to damage it with the laser. Then, they put this kind of cup over your eye to create a suction. It lifts your eyeball every so slightly out of the socket. At this point, you can’t see anymore out of that eye. You can see the laser, which they ask you to focus on and not dart your eyes around. You hear a few clicks, they put your eye back in place, put the flap back in order, and put on a protective contact lens to help you heal. Gotta keep those bad boys in for 24 hours so the healing can do its thing.

Within days, everything started to come into focus: It was like I was back in my mom’s car, staring at the leaves once more in Florida. I didn’t need contacts! I didn’t need glasses! It was miraculous all over again. And thanks to the affordability of Korean healthcare, I didn’t have to take out loans or go into bankruptcy to get this done. On a teacher’s salary, no less!

Now, recently, my eyes have felt very dry. I have to blink a lot to get them wet and ready to see. You know how it goes. Well, I started noticing something: Even when my eyes seemed like they were wet enough, I was having trouble focusing in on things on my screens, in my books, across the room. A sinking feeling started to descend upon me: Is my eyesight getting worse? After nearly 20 years of amazing vision?

The doctors did say that my eyesight could still get worse, and if it did, they couldn’t go back in and zap me again. It was really a one-time deal. My eye test at my yearly physical over the summer cued me into things: I couldn’t get as far as I once did. I struggled to identify numbers and rows I once blew through with ease.

I think all of this has taken a bigger toll on my psyche than I originally thought. I love seeing things. Being able to see is great. I love seeing the comically vibrant flowers bloom in Japan, I love seeing my wife, I love seeing birds swimming in the rivers. I was in denial about it all for months, but I’ve come to accept it: My vision is, in fact, getting poorer, and I might have to go back to glasses and contacts.

There might be other procedures I could do to avoid the expense of glasses and contacts— I haven’t done the research on that yet. But it reminds me of how people get really finnicky about glasses. I couldn’t tell you how many people I know (family included) who just refused to use their glasses, didn’t wear their glasses, or insisted things were fine without their glasses. I never understood that: I want to see, give me the glasses! I know what life’s like without them, and I’d rather have them. I remember my dad would look for things, but if they were right in front of his face, he’d let out a hearty “Ciego!” For those not in the know, that’s Spanish for blind man (or the masculine form for blind, if you want to be nit-picky). I suppose I’m entering my own Ciego era now. I wonder if I’ll start busting that out in my own vocabulary?

I think too that this is the first time in my life I’ve started to feel… older. I turn 40 this year, which isn’t super old, but it is starting to be older than most. I suppose I’ll have to lift my chin and and continue to feel sprightly and ageless in other ways. I feel like I’ll always feel young and young at heart, which is good.

To keep myself sane and to give me a bit of company while I’ve been grinding in games, I’ve recently started watching some streamers. Mainly on YouTube; I’m not ready to migrate to Twitch yet, but maybe one day.

I found this very funny and fun-to-watch woman, Courtney2, and her playthroughs of the FromSoftware catalogue. It’s been a blast going through her archive. So imagine my surprise when one morning YouTube let me know that she was streaming Elden Ring. Well, couldn’t pass that up! I’ve watched a few of her sessions and have really enjoyed myself seeing her go through the game.

Another streamer I’ve started watching is JK Leeds (his livestream channel is JK Stares, as he stares at the camera after he drops some truly amazing dad puns). He’s a FromSoftware challenge runner, meaning he creates special rules for beating various games, such as using throwing knives only, or using a particularly well-known shitty weapon to beat the game. He’s streaming his effort to… checks notes… beat Elden Ring 24 times, using a different school of magic to beat each run. He’s currently on New Game +9, which means he has 15 more to go. I just really like how chill and vibing he is when he plays. It feels nice to play Elden Ring while he’s streaming, too. Gives me motivation to muck around and try something new myself!

I recently finished the book Ghost Town by Kevin Chen, and I have to say, that book rocked so hard. I had never heard of it, had no hype or expectations surrounding it, but holy smokes! That was one of the most poetic and beautifully-written novels I’ve read in quite some time. It definitely fits into the top five modern novels I’ve read in the past few years.

It follows the Chen family in rural Taiwan, and explores the themes of life, love, loss, and the concept of ghosts, be they literal or figurative. You bounce between multiple narrators, and everyone has little pieces of the larger narrative puzzle that you get to see being stitched together as the fly on the wall. The ending almost made me cry; I think being in my office at work helped hold back the waterworks. It’s just so… evocative, all of it. I’m baffled at how Chen wrote this dense, bountiful prose.

Check out this passage, for example:

How incredibly poetic and evocative is that? The image of this powerful man delicately moving pages, attempting to decipher the symbols on the page, an internal struggle none of his external strengths can help him with? Fuck, that’s some good-ass writing.

I’m sure there are other media I could share, but gosh-darnit, I can’t stop thinking about this book. Pick it up, check it out, and give it a read! Despite its density, it reads very smoothly, so you’ll be able to advance at a steady clip. Highly recommended!