Don't Forget to Blink

I've been having a bit of trouble focusing. Not focusing as in "I can't concentrate on one thing" (although one could argue...), but focusing with my eyes. I wore glasses my entire life until about four years ago when a optometrist told me that he could write me a slight perscription but I didn't have to have it. At that point, I ditched glasses for good.

Since that time, I took on a job that involved countless hours of computer time and then I decided to go back to college where I would be reading endless chapters from my textbooks, reading projected slides on the walls of my classroom and significantly adding to the hours I spend glaring into a computer screen. Things have started to get noticably fuzzy for me again, not to mention that I've been coming home with frequent headaches. So, off to the optometrist I went.

Turns out, my vision is actually pretty good, but I am getting a pair of reading glasses for reading & computer work. My eyes have gotten so used to having to constantly focus on something that they kind of get "stuck" in that position, so glasses should help my eyes not to work so hard.

One interesting tid-bit that I walked away with was that I'm probably not blinking enough. The doc said that a person normally blinks 16 times per minute, but when you are concentrating on a computer screen, it slows down to one or two times per minute! Yikes! Not only does that lead to eye strain and headaches, but it also creates dry eyes.

His solution: stick a note on my computer screen that says, "Blink." Simple enough.

So, the tip of the day: Don't forget to blink!