I finally caved, mostly because I’m on my third eye doctor (they keep retiring out from under me) and she told me I should consider the progressives if I’m tired of pushing my glasses up on my head. And I am, although part of that is probably because I’ve been wearing Warby Parker frames that suggest “launching an Apollo mission at 6 and raiding the Klan in Indianola at 9” and almost require a short sleeve white dress shirt and tie. And the earpieces aren’t long enough for my dome, and and and.
So I blew out the flex spending. Zeiss optics, high-index progressive lenses. High-sensitivity transitions coating to make them dark just by looking too long out a closed car window. Black Oakley frames with straight earpieces that are flat and close to the head for hat wear, and which suggest the futuristic version of what I had on my face 35 years ago when the other defining characteristic was braces rather than facial hair.
These are meant to be The Glasses. No going back and forth for sunglasses or computer or reading or driving or what have you, put these on and call it a day. I’m still getting used to tilting my head to focus, and the wobbly countertops when turning left to right are comical, and there are times when everything looks blurry if I don’t stare directly at it. But it’s not terrible, and I suspect I’ll be able and willing to stick with these for the foreseeable future.
I started wearing glasses again almost by accident. I wanted the ability to wear sunglasses more than anything, but I also wanted the freedom to not be bothered, and during the pandemic shelter and beyond it turned into “I’m only bothering with the contacts for college football game days or the like.” And somewhere in there, it got too hard to read the phone with my contacts in. And so here we are.
I don’t expect that before I die I’ll have the ability to have the time in one corner, or have caller ID and text messages come up with a click of my teeth, never mind actual AR-type stuff. But I wouldn’t hate it. And in the meantime, it’s nice to finally unambiguously have The One Thing.