It feels like I'm on the last leg of the journey

 Man.  It's something about the reading exercises that I'm doing that feels like it's going to take me over the top and get me to fusion and stereopsis.  Things are really different now.  The vision feels different, and much improved, and the progress feels accelerated. 

Comedian Neal Brennan uses Vivid Vision for his lazy eye

Whoa... this kind of knocked my socks off when listening to the conversation between Joe Rogan and Neal Brennan on Joe's podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience. He talks about it around 1 hour 20 minutes in episode #1823.

Neal Brennan, for those who don't know, is a famous comedian/writer, who's done a lot of writing for Dave Chappelle on Chappelle's Show.



You may recognize him if you're familiar with the comedy business. Significant exotropia aside, he's a pretty weird looking dude. It's a good argument for being funny if you want to be successful with the ladies.

I've always noticed this about him when looking at his pictures. I was like, 'yeah, that guy does not have 3d vision. No way.'. There are a lot of famous people who have this condition. I think he's maybe had it his entire life, because that's the only way I've ever seen him.

But in the podcast he began talking about it, and talking about doing vision exercises with an Oculus Rift, and doing exercises which involve picking fruit, and which force you to use both eyes. When he said that, I was like 'Crap! I know exactly what game he was talking about!'. I remember playing that game (along with a number of others) doing some QA work for Vision Vision. Crazy the reach those guys at Vivid Vision have. Famous amblyopes are using Vivid Vision. So interesting.

Neal talked about his experience of stereoblindness and thinking that everyone saw the way that he saw, but when his condition was described to him by an eye doctor he was like 'That's what I have!'. Same. Then he described the exercises, and how he's seen improvement already. He talked about how he's got like 1.5 eyes, and how his exercises are effectively turning on his lazy eye. Yup. And then he described that as he continues, the two images will eventually fuse. Yup. Just interesting seeing a famous public person talking about what I've been talking about in this blog for the past ten years.

Man. Vivid Vision. They were definitely pioneers. James Blaha invented virtual reality-based vision therapy. He's a great example of what Peter Thiel recommends about entrepreneurship in his book Zero to One: try to have a monopoly. Don't do what everyone is doing. Do something completely different, create a new arena, and then dominate that arena. I'm guessing James and Vivid Vision is now balling out of control. And if they're not, they're certainly poised to be.

If your workouts aren't challenging and work-intensive, you're probably not achieving anything

I just thought of that, because I couldn't help but notice the relationship between the change in the quality of my vision with the challenge and difficulty level of the exercise of my new workout regimen: reading books.  

Maybe 'difficulty' isn't the right word.   It's really just attention and work when I shift over from left to right when I read pages.  The left eye image is quite a bit stronger still.  So when I switch over to the right eye, I can't immediately get all of the text.  I have to sit there, and linger there a second and really turn up the power in order to absorb all the text within one saccade by leveraging the peripheral vision.  This does seem to make a big difference.  

Man, I've come so far, it's unbelievable.  I remember I used to avoid reading for the longest time, because my eyes had this 'stickiness' when I read books for long periods of time, like they would want to stay converged.  This issue appears to have gone away.  I apparently no longer having any issues with reading for long periods of time.   Indeed, it seems to only have a positive impact (provided that I'm reading the right way).

Reading books again

Reading is one of those activities that I love, and is an important part of my normal life.  An ideal day for me will consist of at least an hour of reading books--not Internet stuff, mind you.  But my non-work activities these days center around caring for my vision, and doing things that promote it.  Maybe that's a mistake.  After all, what is my end goal?  My end goal is having normal vision, and a normal life, doing the things that I naturally prefer to do.  That includes one of my favorite things: scanning pages of text, relatively close-up, for prolonged periods of time. 

Last Saturday I spent around four hours reading Douglas Murray's new book The War on the West, which is a fantastic book, by the way.  I had to tear myself away from it.  Douglas Murray is an absolutely fantastic author.  Anyhiz. 

But I found that reading it was quite work-intensive.  It was odd.  It was an interesting combination of work and pleasure.  It was pleasurable because the book is fantastic, but it was also work-intensive, because it took a lot of effort to read the book and use my eyes in the right kind of way: using both eyes.  

I've talked about this in previous entries, but when I read books and text, I'm careful to use both of my eyes.  I try to use my right eye  as I read things from the right, and the left eye as I land on the left side.  

I try to follow this advice given here by Tim Ferriss (it's really quite thought-provoking and potentially life-changing if you spend five minutes to watch the video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeOHqI9SqOI 

I don't start at the beginning of the left, and I don't end at the very end of the right.  I try my best to use both eyes and leverage and build my peripheral vision.  I found it quite effortful because I found when I switch from left side to right side, I have to work quite hard to see the words on the right, and really strain to see on the right's periphery, because my right eye input isn't as strong as my left eye input--even now as I'm looking at my own text. 

Despite all of that, I continued.  Interestingly enough, I think this had a large positive impact on my vision for the rest of the week.  When watching TV or looking off in the distance, or with flitting my eyes from one object to another, I had to do remarkably little correction.  It was a large noticeable difference from the previous week.  Maybe going back to normal activities and living my normal life is what was needed, after all: albeit, doing normal activities in a mindful way--not the old way.  

It does take me back to one of my oldest entries about Heather showing me her Columns exercise, which was what finally brought her to stereopsis.  It's an exercise I describe here. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K49r34wN91g&list=UUl92tD7n6NCy4EQE0Alizmw&index=14&t=11s

In essence it's an exercise that forces you to use both eyes: flitting from the left column of numbers to the right column of numbers using each eye, as you do so.  You're forced to use both eyes because there's a barrier between the columns.  It's an exercise which achieves almost the same thing as the new exercise I'm doing now: reading books conscious to use both eyes as well as the periphery of each eye.  Using my left eye for the left side, and my right eye for the right side--and if you want to supercharge the results, try to use the in-between areas, by using the peripheral vision.  It is quite a workout.  I think this will be fruitful, and perhaps take me to my end goal. 

Seeing massive improvement today

This is very exciting.  The best part of this is that these changes that I'm now experiencing on a near-daily basis are lasting permanent changes.  It's not as though I've taken a drug that will wear off as time goes on.  Things are going to keep improving until the day finally arrives.

It's almost disorienting a bit as the double images approach parity, as though I don't know which one to use.  But it is quite interesting and stimulating and noticeable when I'm navigating an area where there are a bunch of 3d objects and I can notice how they appear, and see them from different angles simultaneously along with parallax cues.  I do feel quite a bit of gratitude that I get to have this experience--as well as the fact that it's not happening too fast.

Regret

I've been thinking about regret lately: regret about a huge amount of time that may have been wasted because I never tried out another vision therapist.  

Okay, I did kind of have two vision therapists.  One was at Aspire Vision for about a year.  Then another was Tuan Tran.  I did not take Tuan's advice.  His advice was that I should get some prism glasses, which would make it easier for me to achieve fusion.  This would then cause my brain to prefer fusion even more, which would then cause my brain to straighten out the eyes.  That's a well known principle in vision therapy.  It's referred to as the sensory fusion approach to vision therapy.

The reason I'm thinking about this now, is because I've bulldozed my way to the currently point where I am, where it's kind of as though I'm using prisms.  My eyes have improved so much through an unreasonable amount of effort and persistence that they can get their corresponding images (kind of faux fusion) on top of each other nearly all of the time.  

I've been thinking a lot that with vision therapy, you can kind of substitute technique with sheer tenacity and doggedness.  That's true with a lot of things, frankly.  Do I have regret about not getting another vision therapist and listening to them?  Kind of, and also kind of no.  I almost think the prism glasses wouldn't have helped.   Maybe they would have.  Maybe not.  But I've been burned in the past.  Of course, they can look at my situation now and say 'if you listened to me, or got a vision therapist, you could have saved a TON of time.'.  Of course.  Of course. Of course it might have.  Then, of course, it might not have.  And who pays the price if it doesn't?  It's just such a crapchute.  It is what it is. 

So do I have regret?  Not so much. 

Still making smooth and steady progress

 I'm noticing quite a bit of improvement in my vision today.  

How to explain it.  I'm starting to think about my entire vision as whole now.  I still have constant double vision, but I'm able to see it and think of it as a cohesive whole, which is very different.  I think it's something to do with the fact that when I look around, there's not much adjustment I have to do--whether it's objects far away or nearby.  

No matter how many times I say 'I think I"m going to have stereo vision in a month or two.' the progress is constant--especially in the past few months. 

Cannot justify stopping.