Doctor, my eyes have seen the years and the slow parade of tears

Undergoing several eye surgeries has cleared my vision in many ways.

(With thanks to Jackson Browne for the great song lyrics)

I had known something was wrong with my vision long before I felt the urgency to do anything about it. I was having trouble discerning colors, everything seemed dim, and driving had become a challenge because the lane lines on the freeway appeared to be fuzzy. Looking to my left became progressively difficult. But there was always an event to cover, a column to write, a plane to catch, so I kept going and hoped things wouldn’t get so bad that I couldn’t function.

The truth became undeniable early last year when I was in the press box at a Kings game, looking down at the ice, and I saw not one puck but four or five. Why weren’t the officials stopping the game to collect those extra pucks before something went wrong?

There was, in truth, only one puck. The other black dots were generated by my damaged and detached left retina, which required extensive repair.

That became the first of four eye surgeries I’ve undergone starting in February of last year and ending a month ago. My left retina (the most delicate and complicated procedure) and my right retina (to clean up annoying floaters) were repaired last year. Each eye was operated on again this year, this time to clear the cataracts that had clouded my vision so badly that I had given up driving at night and had limited my trips to familiar destinations. I felt my world shrinking, and I hated it.

I also kept remembering the classic “Twilight Zone” episode “Time Enough at Last,” in which book-loving bank teller Henry Bemis—whose boss and wife won’t let him indulge his reading habits—finds himself becoming the last man alive after a nuclear holocaust. He despairs and thinks about taking his life until he finds a library with an endless supply of books and no one to tell him he can’t read whenever and however much he wants.

In one of the many unexpected twists for which the “Twilight Zone” was famous, Bemis (poignantly and perfectly played by Burgess Meredith) was gleefully planning his reading schedule when he leaned over to pick up one of the many books he finally had time to read and his glasses slipped off and shattered, effectively making him blind. “There was time now,” he mourned. I felt the same way: I had time to read, but my eyes weren’t working well enough for me to get to all those books I’d stacked up. It wasn’t fair.

I’m happy to report that skillful surgeons have done their work well. For someone who started wearing glasses in second grade and adopted contact lenses during high school, the notion of being able to see clearly when I open my eyes in the morning is bizarre but wonderful. The downside is that I now can see in great detail all the dust that has accumulated on my bookshelves and furniture, but I’ll take that tradeoff any day. My world is reopening, and I’m grateful for that.

Before and between the two cataract surgeries, while it was difficult to read and I felt uncomfortable driving great distances, I delved deeply into social media for entertainment. Deeply enough to see that reducing my time on Twitter (I refuse to call it X), Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky will be the smartest and healthiest next steps I can take.

At its best, social media can be a lifeline for people who feel isolated or alienated. It can help build community, provide a place to share knowledge and fandom anecdotes, offer opportunities to vent or to praise, and serve as an effective tool to disseminate news. That immediacy and wide reach are especially useful when seeking (or producing) information about sports.

That’s why I’ll continue to retweet my observations or news on Twitter (@helenenothelen). I’ve tiptoed into Threads (@dhenleyfan, with a photo of Talky Tina from the classic “Living Doll” episode of “The Twilight Zone). Apparently, I missed the memo that the cool kids are now moving on to Bluesky (where I’m @puckgirl05.bsky.social). I haven’t done much there because I’m not sure about it yet; it feels like it hasn’t developed a strong identity. I’m still on Facebook because it’s an easy way to reach friends and relatives and because I’m old and I know how to post photos and stories there that I like to share, including Substack musings like this one.

But I’ve vowed to stop myself from continuing to go down the rabbit hole of doomscrolling, which I did too often for my own well-being. I became exasperated by the frequent repetition of inaccuracies (committed by people on both sides of the political fence), by the parade of posts that dripped of venom and quickly dropped into the gutter of name-calling, and by seeing a confounding number of uninformed and potentially dangerous responses to financial and legal questions. You’re really trusting anonymous strangers on social media to tell you what to do with your life savings?

Let’s not even get into the constant and ridiculous number of anecdotes centering on airplane seat-switching misbehavior. (Sit in the seat you’re assigned, for heaven’s sake, or politely try to negotiate a switch instead of obnoxiously demanding it). Enough already.

Read books in whatever form you prefer. Watch movies. Binge-watch shows. Play music or sing or do whatever brings you joy. Maybe (gasp) talk to a neighbor. If there’s no one around, talk to yourself. Seriously. Sometimes, working through a problem out loud can lead to new clarity.

Treat social media as a toy, an amusement, not a necessity. Skim over the best of what has (sadly) become a cesspool, but don’t fall in. I can see clearly that, at least for me, minimizing social media engagement is the way to go.