On behalf of contact lens wearers, I had one final question for my Vancouver-based optometrist, Dr. Janey Yee. I do not wear contacts myself. I’ve given birth, considered the challenge of walking on coals, and did successfully certify as a scuba diver. Putting a little disc into my eye area, myself? Can’t. Here’s what I found out for you though.
Dr. Yee, are there special precautions for contact lens wearers in these COVID care times? Any advice for all of us with prescriptive eyewear?
Finally, we can see light at the end of the tunnel out of our COVID-created caves. Restrictions are being lifted in British Columbia. Vaccines are en route. We can look forward – that is if we can see past the blue light emanating from our ubiquitous screens. After months in front of my work, my social, my edutainment screens, my eyes needed ‘re-hab.’ So, I turned for advice on how we can protect our eyes and improve our overall performance to my personal optometrist in Vancouver, Dr. Janey Yee.
As a writer and content creator tied to my screens, my eyes are engaged, a lot. Those work hours can send a message of fatigue to the brain at the entry point, the eyes. It can also filter a false sense of overall fatigue to the rest of the body when I most need to feel focused and energized. To top it off, like most of us, I was Zoomed-Skyped-Google Hang’d –Out!
Care of our eyes and preservation of our sight is essential if we wish to live and work well in our current tech-connected world. Plus, our year in the safety of our COVID caves, called on our eyes to perform to the max as we all huddled around any number of blue light-emitting screens. Combined, they kept us sane, social, and solvent, hopefully. Now, how to care for this precious resource?
You might start, as I did, with a comprehensive, eye exam at your optometrist. In this post, Dr. Janey Yee @180 Optometry and Eye Wear answered questions I wanted to share with you about issues and eye care that we must know, given the intensity of screen use we are committed to since COVID accelerated our dependency on them.
A colleague laughs at my COVID-inspired code for too much time spent creating content for clients, sitting in on video meetings, and researching online. I call it frying my eyeballs. I’m not proud of it. I do my best to keep the cookery to a minimum. But what can we do?
No matter your choice of device or the technology we use to work, to socialize, to learn, or to seek escapist entertainment – we can’t stop. Can we?
Happy Holidays. Happy Hanukkah, however you spell it. Merry Christmas although my older British friends prefer Happy Christmas. How do I best greet a Kwanzaa celebrant?? I think I got the season’s first festival of lights right, Diwali, or is it Deepavali? Solstice anyone?? Oy vey. Perhaps this repost of my 2014 “Communication Culture” column in The Afro News MIGHT shed light???
Original post below… Please share YOUR greeting suggestions!
This isn’t a blog about resolutions, or grand visions or a post on lists of lists.
It’s a start. That’s the best you can do on any intention or mission.
It’s a conversation with myself and I’m sharing, But hey, YOU might find practical tips embedded in the posts. After all, I am a writer by profession. So, you can expect there to be, even unconsciously, education – information – and honourable mentions of techniques in overcoming paralysis and procrastination by summoning creativity and resilience. Not too tall an order I’ve written myself into, eh?
Just start.
And there’s no plan unless you count sitting down and doing something about that intention, daily.
So, while I might brainstorming with a mind map down the road- something you can do at a moment’s notice and by yourself, no matter what the time of day or night, the call to action for now is simply to START. I’ll try not to overthink the daily posts and just let myself be motivated by what comes my way each day.
I sat a bit higher in my office chair and felt a flow of energy for a better business day as I spoke with Vancouver chiropractor, Dr. Matt Nelson. In the early weeks of the pandemic when we were asked to shelter in place, in-office visits to our daily healthcare providers stopped. Collectively, we settled into our COVID created caves.
As we sat in front of screens to work, to play, to learn and to stay connected with our business and social networks- – -we lost some power and gained some pains. Bad habits snuck in. Our usual health sustaining routines seeped out.
With BC ‘opening up’ and our coming out, we’re looking to regain some of that strength to move about well and to live life – a bit better.
I asked Dr. Nelson for advice on caring for ourselves from a chiropractic perspective:
April 11 seems to be the day. I didn’t pick it or plan for it.
Today is the day my life moved from BCV (Before Covid19) to beginning to piece together my PCV (Post Covid19) future forward self. But first a moment on what budged me, at last.
How was your date this weekend?
You know. That date with yourself that gifts you time to reconnect with yer own fine self?
Julia Cameron’s work in her book The Artist’s Way defines it as: The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery.
I have to say I instituted my own artist date LONG before I even heard of Julia Cameron. Maybe before she discovered her own way to such a program based on the small meetings of wild women writers seeking – something – together in her home?
My date night was on Wednesday. I referred to my Wednesdays as my own religious night. The irony of the phrase was not lost on Peter Warren, the highly rated morning host of a civic rabble rousing radio show at CJOB. Peter knew I was married to an atheist. Maybe he saw the value of my staking out my own time out to rediscover my creative self beyond all the roles I fulfilled.
That will be $4.22 from $20.
So… 3 pennies to 4.25 then 50, 75 and another quarter to get us to 5.00. A blue fiver to $10 and a purple $10 bill for $20. Thank you for your business.
That’s old school change giving. Counted out one coin and bill at a time.
Now no pennies in Canada. So we round DOWN, or up to the nearest five. Anyway, the computerized register tells us exactly what to give back to the customer who is probably juggling a phone and not paying attention as they accept the mess of money handed them. All in one clammy fist-full by the clerk.
It snowed overnight. Temperatures will be a handful of degrees below zero all week. By our southern west-coast of BC wussy standards it is cold. It is damp. There is wind. Skiers and snowboarders are happy, and likely high with the news of more snow. An upswing is expected in time for T.G.I.F. of +1 Celsius, daytime temperature.
There will be 5 entire Wednesdays, 5 Thursdays and 5 Fridays in this month of January 2020. This Monday, however, will not come again, nor did it exist before – all bright and shiny and new.
OK. not so sun-shiny, but a new shiny. The snow was not as bright as the wonderland of snow that covered the Prairie winter I grew up in. But our rare west coast city snow was on the grass, the branches, the roof top of the church across the street and all along the hedges. All was calm and steady and the air was totally different – clean and fresh in the truest ‘sense’.