Eye update and current life evaluation

So I was out on disability for 2 months after the accident.  I returned to work the week after Thanksgiving full time and it took a while to get back in the swing of things.  The good news is that I was already working from home 3 days a week so my boss just let me work from home full time until I felt comfortable driving in the office.  It's an hour commute each way looking directly in to the sun both ways.  In January I started coming in on Fridays (traffic's lighter) and in February I'll start back on my 2 days a week in the office.

Speaking of driving, I HATE IT.  I have no depth perception and it's really scary when there's moving vehicles all around you.  I'm having the hardest time with the side to side perspective.  If I'm in the inside lane, all the traffic coming from the other direction look like they are coming straight at me.  I know they're not (at least I hope they're not) but it still looks that way to me.  I only drive when absolutely necessary.  And I might be like that for a long time.

The doctor wants to see if I can keep my original corneal transplant.  It got cloudy with the trauma but has been clearing up gradually since then.  I've been seeing my eye doctor every 2 weeks since the accident.  If it continues to clear up I won't have to have another transplant.  If it doesn't . . . then I'll have to have my name put back on the transplant list and wait my time until it comes up.  Whether my name will come up faster because I've already had one or slower . . . because I've already had one, I don't know.  They won't fix the inside of my eye until they know what the outside (cornea) is going to do.

So, if everything continues to heal and my cornea clears up I might need just one surgery to put another lens in my eye.  It's going to be more complicated than a regular cataract surgery but essentially the same type of surgery since I don't have the little sleeve pocket that the lens usually sits in so they'll have to improvise something to make sure the lens stays in place and doesn't move around in my eye.

Either way, no matter what happens any surgery is still going to be months away for me.  I've been trying to find my "new normal" and get back in to a regular swing of life.  That mostly consists of me sitting at home doing very little after work because my eyes are so tired by the time I'm done.  i also sleep a lot on the weekends (which messes up my sleep schedule during the week for work).

I have started playing video games again but most of the time my heart isn't in it.  I've started posting again this month but only 2 days a week instead of 3.  But I've been thinking a lot about that lately.  I've begone to question if I should continue recording and posting to YouTube.  There's so much time, and vision, involved that my current circumstance is only making more difficult.

I started my YouTube channel to help force me to finish games.  I figured if I took the time to post of video of a game I was making a commitment to actually finishing the game.  But since it's so much harder to play the game, and then edit the video for a game, I'm starting to think it's not worth it for me anymore.  And that makes me sad.

I've actually finished a bunch of games because of my YouTube videos.  I'm afraid if I stop posting then my finish rate will just go down.  But on the other hand it's just so labor intensive for me right now when I'm already struggling to do normal things.  And while I'm proud of each and everyone of the people who have subscribed to my channel my analytics tell me that's not who's watching my videos (and they don't watch for very long).  If I'm putting all that strain on my eyes I really have to think if it's worth it to continue.

I might be healing physically from the accident, but the emotional, psychological and mental process of healing and coming to grips with the fact that I'm now temporarily (hopefully) half blind and will be for possibly another year or more is progressing much slower.  I cry and small stupid things.  If I miss something because I couldn't see it I cry even more.  It's a process and it will take time and I know I'll get there but I have to look at all the things in my life and see what things are helpful to me and what things might actually be harmful to me. 

Spending a lot of time and effort to do a simple thing like play a video game and edit the video might be more than I can handle.  I've told myself that I will finish the games I currently have in rotation (i.e. whatever I'm in the mood to play at that time) and see how I feel after that.  Some of those games are long (like Lost Odyssey) and I might have to make a decision about those earlier than that.  The problem is I don't like to leave things half finished.  If I stopped posting videos in the middle of a play through of a game, even if I continued to play it "off line" from YouTube, it would still feel unfinished.

I've got a lot of decisions in my life and things I've got to deal with now.  I'm not an optimist.  I'm a realist.  But I know things will be better because I want them to and I will work towards that to try and make that happen.  It's just that this is where my life is now and I've got to deal with it the best way that I can for the time being.  If anything changes, I'll let you all know.