When The Mind Is Willing, But The Body Is Not

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This past week and a half has been incredibly exciting here at JMG-Galleries.com. Quite a few new subscribers have joined the conversation here, many as a result of the news in my blog post How Every Flickr Photo Ended Up on Sale This Weekend. Unfortunately for me at the peak of activity of this conversation my eyes started giving me some problems. As you can imagine, for someone who loves photography as much as I do, having healthy eyes is a top priority. After seeing an eye specialist or two it became apparent that I’ve been working my eyes into the ground and am suffering from some hefty eye fatigue. Who would have thought being in front of a computer for 60-80 hours a week would be bad for you.

So much to my chagrin I’ve forced myself to limit my computer time for the time being. Strangely as coincidence would have it this happened only a week and a half before a planned photography trip to Utah where I’ll be meeting up with Guy Tal who is an extremely gifted photographer and author. Letting my eyes focus on the natural world versus a computer monitor over the next 5 days should help both eyes, mind and soul.

To all my blog readers thanks for visiting and subscribing. If you’ve commented here on the blog or emailed me recently I will reply, but only after my eyes have had a chance to recover.

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Posted by Jim on 07.17.2008 at 8:59 am
Tagged: Updates & Announcements

http://fieldreport.wordpress.com Richard Wong

Best of luck w/ the health issues, Jim. A few years ago, my optometrist suggested getting reading glasses to wear on top of my contacts so it would “alleviate” pressure on the eyes. Then after a year or so, my eyesight had gotten better for the first time in my life. (I’m near-sighted to begin with).
http://shutter.antisoc.net D. T. North

I was diagnosed with the same thing several years ago when I was in college. I worked 30+ hours a week as a tech support consultant, plus I was working on my project through most weekends. I was easily pulling 100 hours in front of the computer a week, and that’s back when we had CRTs with bad refresh rates.

My ophthalmologist gave me a ton of great pointers and they’ve helped significantly. 10 years later, and I still havn’t had a major relapse. Here’s a few of the better tips:

1. Get rid of any florescent light near your computer. Your monitor (even LCDs) have a refresh rate (they blink very fast). So do florescent lights. Get the two together, and they conflict, wreaking havoc on your eyes. Incandescent bulbs, however, do not refresh, so this lessens this problem.

2. Hang an eye chart or an article with a few different font sizes on the wall at eye level near your workstation at about an arms length from you. Make a conscious effort to read this several times throughout the day.

3. Make a conscious effort to look around frequently throughout the day to take your eyes away from your monitor.

4. Eye excercises (http://www.i-see.org/eyecharts.html). Especially download and use the Presbyopia chart (http://www.i-see.org/gottlieb/presbyopia_chart.pdf) and the String of peals chart (http://www.i-see.org/gottlieb/string_of_pearls.pdf). I use both of these twice a day.

5. Take eye breaks. A few times a day, cover your eyes completely with your palms so that no light gets in. Keep your eyes open and stare into the darkness. I do this for a few minutes at a time when I feel eye strain and sometimes when I need to think. Great stress relief as well.

Hope those tips help.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/compulsion/sets/ Ron H

D.T.North,
I’m going to give your recommendations a try. I’m a developer, and I certainly spend 80+ hrs/week staring at screens. My eyes are chronically fatigued. A little extra acuity would certainly help me in my two main hobbies, both of which are highly dependent on the ability to see (namely, photography and paintball)
http://www.jmg-galleries.com Jim

@D.T. North Thanks for the great tips. I’m pursuing your recommendations among others provided by my doctor. I’m actually running through a course of eye therapy to get my eyes working as they should. Hopefully this will pass quickly.