Blind or Deaf?

If you had to choose one or the other, would you rather be totally blind or totally death from birth?

This is a question I have thought about a lot in my life for some reason. Perhaps it's because I believe that these two senses are the most important of the five major senses, and that living without one or the other would pose significant difficulties and losses in life that the loss of the other senses might not necessarily cause. So maybe it is the severity of the loss that causes me so much fascination over this question.

I weigh the cons of deafness and blindness:

If blind, I wouldn't understand the concept of color, wouldn't be able to derive meaning from the looks on people's faces or their body posture, wouldn't fully appreciate movies, paintings, southern Utah, or sunsets.

If deaf, I wouldn't understand music, or be able to appreciate prosody, alliteration, rhyme, and intonation in language. My whole concept of language would be different, and there would be a barrier between myself and others because of this. Consequently, my world would be much smaller.

And there are probably other cons worth considering in each case, but these are the main things that I think of: life without color and visual beauty (not to mention the difficulty in navigation), or life without music and language as we know it.

For me, this was always a rather easy choice, because music and language just happen to be my two major passions in life. So naturally, I would choose blindness. But now that I recently got my vision corrected and can appreciate crispness of lines and detail at a distance, I'm finding myself quite pleased that I don't actually have to make this choice.

And I'm especially glad to not be Helen Keller.

But I'd like to know, my friends, if you had to choose between deafness and blindness, which would you choose?




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I'm Going Blind

Well, alright, not actually blind, per se. But whereas my eyes were about -1.50 a little less than a year ago, they are about -2.50 now. My contacts weren't really doing that much for me, and I thought it might be due to the dry weather and my slight astigmatism, but nope, it turns out my vision has dramatically declined over the past year. I knew I was seeing worse, but I didn't know the change was so much in such a little time.

My doctor says the rapid change probably has to do with the fact that I look at a computer screen all day at my job. So this gives me even more impetus to get out of this work. It's true I did a lot of computer work at my old job, but that was only for 5 hours a day, and there wasn't as much computer gazing in that job. I do like working with computers, but I must admit my eyes get tired.

Well anyway, I've got some new and very much more comfortable contact lenses that actually seem to breathe, unlike my last brand, and I've ordered what I hope will be some very classy and stylish new frames for those days when I just don't want to stick my finger in my eye.

Let's hope I can get out of my job before it makes me go blind!




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Escaping 9 to 5 Chronicle Part 4

The pattern with Ian’s and my work world escape plotting over the past six months or so goes like this: we think of an idea that might work, and we get dead set on it and excited about it, and confident that it’s what we want to do, and then after a matter of weeks, days, or even hours, we rethink the whole thing and are back to the drawing board all over again.

Our ideas fall all across the board. Sometimes we are going to patent an invention and license it, sometimes we are going to start up an internet business, sometimes we are going to start up a physical business. Sometimes our ideas never get very developed. With all this back and forth and across the board, I’ve felt quite a bit of confusion after each episode.

There are two major forces working on me: the desire to get out of Salt Lake, and the desire to get out of being a slave worker and enter the freedom of being my own boss. So I’ve come to the conclusion that the business direction that we ultimately decide to take hinges upon one basic decision: whether to stay in or leave Salt Lake.

We had this idea to open a coffee shop or pub. If we went this route, we would definitely stay in Salt Lake for at least a few years. We couldn’t really take this idea elsewhere, because it’s looking like Seattle is the main candidate for where we’d like to move if we leave. There is no paucity of coffee shops and pubs in Seattle, so if we went there, we would have to come up with something else. Also, the expense of moving would set us back so that we would probably have to work regular slave jobs until we are more settled and able to recoup some capital.

That’s kind of what it’s looking like: move away and delay business plans, or start business plans, but be stuck in Salt Lake for at least a few more years. At this point I don’t know which looks better. Sometimes I have days where I find myself very dissatisfied with my job, and on those days, opening the coffee shop looks really good, but other days my job might be alright (it’s never really good), but I find myself bored with this dying city and eager to leave. Escape the job, or escape the city.

I’m not sure what to do.

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Lights Out!

It's February 6. The groundhog failed to see his shadow four days ago. Apparently, that signifies an early spring. (Although, I somehow remember that Groundhog Day is a gimmick, and regardless of whether he sees his shadow or not, spring is six weeks away.)

Alright, so spring is around the corner… so WHY THE HELL ARE PEOPLE STILL TURNING ON CHRISTMAS LIGHTS?!?!?

It happens every year. Some people get so excited about Christmas that they feel it is necessary to keep their lights on well into the new year. I can forgive this in January, but now it's February, and if the lights aren't down, they should at least be TURNED OFF! I've seen Christmas lights as late as March before, but this year, I'm gonna get some garden shears (with insulated handles, naturally) and make sure the lights go out!

(Disclaimer: Any mention of vandalism in this blog is only contemplated as hypothetical reality.)

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