(no subject)
Apr. 26th, 2002 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThis morning started out with a trip to get my eyes checked. It's been a couple of years, and I figured I was past due, so I made the appointment last Friday when I saw my doctor. (One of the things I like about this clinic, one of the main reasons I keep going there, is that I can do pretty much everything routine in the same building.) At the moment, I'm sitting rather further back from the monitor than is normal for me and wearing "sunglasses" (actually a dark plastic insert that goes behind my glasses) to compensate for getting my pupils dilated. I can just see well enough to type. There'll be no close work for a while.
The clinician I saw told me that she suspects that my trouble with large screen movies and the like is only partially a problem with my eyes. She believes that more than half of it is with my brain and how it processes visual information. She warned me that it may get worse as I get older, particularly since it has gotten worse over the years. She says it's related to the difficulty that I have with reading light colored print on a dark background (which in turn, she labels as something roughly akin to dyslexia). As I was traveling toward home, it occurred to me that this may mean that I'll never really be able to drive.
My mother was my age when she learned to drive. I've got a license but don't use it because the thought of driving panics me. We've only the one car, anyway, so that's not such a big deal, but I've always maintained that eventually I'll start driving. Anyway, my mother has some of the same visual problems I do, but they're not currently as bad for her as they are for me and never have been. My suspicion is that I wouldn't be able to process information about what was around me if I were driving a car at, say, highway speeds. I avoid looking out the window at anything nearby when I'm a passenger at such speeds because things move too fast for me to feel comfortable. I'm much better off reading (no, I don't get motion sick) or doing some other form of close work.
I suppose I'll see how it goes over the next few years. My mother-in-law very much wants me to start driving, and I suspect that the pressure there will get heavier, especially if we ever have a child.
All of this matters in part because I've been thinking a bit about how nice it would be to have a bigger house eventually. I just fear that we'd have to move out of town in order to do it. There're lots of places within commuting distance of Scott's job that have a much less expensive housing market than our town does, but they'd all require that I be able to drive if I ever want to be able to run errands on my own. I would no longer be able to get to the doctor, for example, without assistance.
We're unlikely to move unless we have a child. Our current quarters are a bit cramped due to all of our crap, but books don't complain if they're jumbled in together or hear all the noises that pass through the thin walls and floor. I don't see any real reason to spend more money for more space to store more things.
The clinician I saw told me that she suspects that my trouble with large screen movies and the like is only partially a problem with my eyes. She believes that more than half of it is with my brain and how it processes visual information. She warned me that it may get worse as I get older, particularly since it has gotten worse over the years. She says it's related to the difficulty that I have with reading light colored print on a dark background (which in turn, she labels as something roughly akin to dyslexia). As I was traveling toward home, it occurred to me that this may mean that I'll never really be able to drive.
My mother was my age when she learned to drive. I've got a license but don't use it because the thought of driving panics me. We've only the one car, anyway, so that's not such a big deal, but I've always maintained that eventually I'll start driving. Anyway, my mother has some of the same visual problems I do, but they're not currently as bad for her as they are for me and never have been. My suspicion is that I wouldn't be able to process information about what was around me if I were driving a car at, say, highway speeds. I avoid looking out the window at anything nearby when I'm a passenger at such speeds because things move too fast for me to feel comfortable. I'm much better off reading (no, I don't get motion sick) or doing some other form of close work.
I suppose I'll see how it goes over the next few years. My mother-in-law very much wants me to start driving, and I suspect that the pressure there will get heavier, especially if we ever have a child.
All of this matters in part because I've been thinking a bit about how nice it would be to have a bigger house eventually. I just fear that we'd have to move out of town in order to do it. There're lots of places within commuting distance of Scott's job that have a much less expensive housing market than our town does, but they'd all require that I be able to drive if I ever want to be able to run errands on my own. I would no longer be able to get to the doctor, for example, without assistance.
We're unlikely to move unless we have a child. Our current quarters are a bit cramped due to all of our crap, but books don't complain if they're jumbled in together or hear all the noises that pass through the thin walls and floor. I don't see any real reason to spend more money for more space to store more things.
no subject
Date: 2002-04-26 09:38 am (UTC)One other solution that can work, is that if you're not driving all that often *anyway*, it's surprisingly often cheaper to pay for the occaisional taxi than to support another car (both payments and things like insurance), if you actually do all the math. Especially if the places you need to get to are reasonably close (a few miles)
The other thing I'd suggest is maybe talking to a driving instructor at a driving school which specialises in working with adults. They'd probably be able to help you determine if you could cope under some circumstances safely, or if there were coping techniques you could learn that would keep you (and the other folks on the road) safe.
When I got my license (at the age of 22.5), when I looked in the yellow pages, there were several driving schools that specialised in dealing with adult or nervous drivers.
(And the one I ended up calling was great - I'd failed my driver's test at 16.5, and had been very nervous both about taking it, and the pressure of taking it - less than a month after I got my license, I was starting my first real job, and moving into my first apartment, and I needed to drive tomake it from the apartment to the job.)