I still remember back when my mom drove me to and back from Mid Pen, as we get onto the Dumbarton Bridge, I'd always be excited to see the Sun Microsystems sign and their office buildings. Of course that is all gone now, replaced with a huge Facebook hitchhiker's thumb, along with Facebook and Instagram headquarters. Facebook has also changed the way we blog. Back then, I'd rant and talk about my problems and things on my mind here, over the past 7 years, Facebook has sort of replaced this, although it is not exactly the same thing. The whole company went from being a small company helping friends connect or reconnect with each other, to being a huge company that hoards and sells off your personal data.
We have also changed the way we use our phones and the phones we use has changed too. Back then, we'd use phones for their intended purpose, for calls, texts, and maybe the occasional crappy photo (if you were the lucky few with a crappy camera on your phone). The phone batteries would last weeks to months on a single charge instead of just a few days if you're lucky. People didn't care much about security because our lives didn't revolve around a tiny device that flips open when you need to use it. Now we protect our phones like it's our baby, sheltering it from the criminals of this world, and protecting it from getting damaged or lost. Also, the smartphones these days are a lot more fragile, and break a lot easier than the flip phones back in the day. Everyone has a mini computer in their pockets everyday now, and we barely use it for their original purpose, to place calls and send texts. Instead we use them as our cameras, our social media clients, as an exercise tracker, etc... It seems as if we use our phones these days for everything but their original purpose. Remember back then when your math teacher would tell you're most likely not going to have a calculator in your pocket in the future? I bet those teachers feel pretty stupid now don't they? HAHA
Vision Loss
Things has also changed for me too, I wouldn't say for the worse, but I went from a passionate photographer for over a decade, to an individual who uses a white cane. Unfortunately, I've been diagnosed with neurological conditions (visual snow syndrome and migraines) that affect my vision. It does not make me fully blind, but it does impair my vision quite a bit. I still take photos to a certain extent, but the vision loss has severely cut into my ability to take photos and ambulate. There are no treatments for the first and limited treatments for the latter. There is also not a lot of research on visual snow syndrome. Both conditions seem to affect the way the brain processes visual information from the eyes. My eyes, on the other hand, are healthy.
I am readapting to my remaining vision and my remaining senses, and using a white cane, so things are getting easier over time. I wouldn't say this is for the worse. I can finger read Grade I Braille to a certain extent (sometimes I don't have any remaining vision to use, the amount of vision loss varies a bit daily), so I can read in the dark. I can navigate in the dark pretty well, which means I'm not completely lost during a black out. Also it has helped me experience the world in whole new ways. My hearing is a lot more sensitive now, I can hear a lot more things these days, and have a much better time locating and identifying things just by the sounds they make. I can identify a lot of things by touch only. These are skills a lot of people without disabilities don't have, and it allows me to do things those people can't do.
I have also started appreciating a lot of new things in life, and learned not take things for granted. Everything in life can change fast, mother nature is unforgiving, Murphy's law is real. One day you can be a passionate photographer, and the next you can be blind as a bat (not exactly my situation, but you get my point). My conditions are neurological, there are short periods where my vision returns to normal or almost normal, I always fill up these "good periods" with as much vision intensive work as I can.
I am also very grateful that I am living in the 21st century, where technology is advancing at an incredible rate. Accessible technology is also way better than back in the day, and I am very grateful I'm dealing with vision impairment now than over a decade ago. Screen reader support is somewhat mature these days, they don't sound like the old robotic voice of Microsoft Sam anymore, they sound a lot more human and it is easier to understand them. AI can figure out what is on photos and tell me. I can video chat with volunteers so they can look at my surroundings and help guide me. Computer monitors has gotten so big these days, I can magnify things quite big. Also, big companies are a lot more aware of the importance of accessibility for the disabled, so they are building native assistive technology right into the devices we use.
I am also very grateful that I am living in the 21st century, where technology is advancing at an incredible rate. Accessible technology is also way better than back in the day, and I am very grateful I'm dealing with vision impairment now than over a decade ago. Screen reader support is somewhat mature these days, they don't sound like the old robotic voice of Microsoft Sam anymore, they sound a lot more human and it is easier to understand them. AI can figure out what is on photos and tell me. I can video chat with volunteers so they can look at my surroundings and help guide me. Computer monitors has gotten so big these days, I can magnify things quite big. Also, big companies are a lot more aware of the importance of accessibility for the disabled, so they are building native assistive technology right into the devices we use.
Anyways, I'm really glad to be back writing on this blog. Hopefully it won't be another 7 years before I write here again. No idea if I will continue writing here, but I hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you do decide to go read my past posts, please keep in mind I wrote on this blog back then during my immature, teenage years, so you might see things that are offensive, things that are considered not nice by modern standards, or things that people wouldn't say these days. There might also be broken links in the past posts.
