The most surprising part about learning to navigate the world with very little sight is discovering how much of the heavy lifting has already been done, at least when it comes to making the world at least somewhat manageable. This is having a direct impact on my plans for international travel, not to mention my life in general.<\/p>\n
Take stairs, for example.\u00a0 Missing a step is a very easy mistake when you can\u2019t see the bottom of a staircase, so new staircases built to code today are designed so at the bottom, the rail levels out to be parallel with the floor at exactly the point where the last step ends.\u00a0 That way, you know you\u2019re on level ground.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another one: I never noticed the little nubbin on the number \u201c5\u201d key on the remote control before now, but now I know it\u2019s there as a tactile guide to orient a blind user around the other keys.\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t think keypads would be a challenge until you try to work them with your eyes closed.\u00a0 That little nubbin?\u00a0 Just incredibly useful.\u00a0 Are you listening, DirecTV?\u00a0 Because I\u2019m talking to you.<\/p>\n
Anyhoo\u2026<\/p>\n
In an earlier life, I was a reporter.\u00a0 Spend enough time in television news and you learn a few truisms.\u00a0 In no particular order, they are as follows:<\/p>\n
The most useful truism, however, and one which\u00a0 I\u2019ve already ignored in this post is this: don\u2019t bury the lead.\u00a0 Forgive me, Uncle Walter, for I have sinned.\u00a0 So I\u2019d better get on with it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to explore the world, and I\u2019d like everyone to come with me.<\/p>\n
Well, maybe not everyone, per se, but I am going to make it as easy as possible for everyone to follow along.<\/p>\n
True confession: there is only one thing in my life that is truly embarrassing to me, and it\u2019s the fact that as of this writing, I have never traveled outside of the United States.\u00a0 Not one step.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been to 48 states (sorry, Hawaii and Delaware, I\u2019m working on it) but there are zero stamps in my passport.\u00a0 I just never put a priority on international travel, and let time pass.<\/p>\n
What bothers me the most is that there isn\u2019t any grand, noble or otherwise overriding reason for this lapse. I\u2019m hardly George Bailey, sacrificing college, my honeymoon and that enormous twenty thousand dollars a year salary so Mr. Potter won\u2019t get his sweaty hands on the Building and Loan.\u00a0 I just\u2026 let life happen.\u00a0 I spent my twenties trying to climb the ladder.\u00a0 I spent my thirties creating a business.\u00a0 Now here I am with all those, as they say, best laid plans in the rear view mirror, and life turned out more than a little differently.<\/p>\n
There were opportunities.\u00a0 The college kid who was going to bike across Italy but took the job in South Dakota instead?\u00a0 That was me, being all grown up and whatnot.\u00a0 The twenty eight year old who was going to take the job with the internet startup that needed experienced reporters in Asia?\u00a0 That guy played it safe and went to Memphis instead because it was a three year contract with no shooting and a dental plan.\u00a0 The thirty nine year old who was bound and determined to fly to Australia on the day before his fortieth birthday and who, thanks to the international date line, would land in Sydney on the day\u00a0after<\/em>\u00a0his birthday, forever enabling him to say he didn\u2019t have a fortieth birthday?\u00a0 He spent that week looking for apartments n Oakland with a woman he broke up with nine weeks later, and has been single ever since.<\/p>\n Regrets?\u00a0 Sing it, Frank, because I\u2019ve had a few.<\/p>\n My passport isn\u2019t so much a useful document as it is a living being sitting in a drawer with my Home Depot card, a coupon for fifteen percent off my next purchase at Bed, Bath and Beyond and a box of paper clips, quietly mocking me as I search for extra batteries.\u00a0 It might even be expired.\u00a0 I honestly don\u2019t know.\u00a0 The closest it ever came to actually being used was when I was scheduled to accompany a local Air Force unit to Ramstein AFB in Germany, their staging area for sorties over Afghanistan.\u00a0 When the deployment was shelved, so was the passport.\u00a0 I still haven\u2019t been past the water\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n This ends now<\/p>\n It starts, of course, with a story.\u00a0 Conveniently enough, crayons are involved.<\/p>\n Really, everything you need to know about me begins and ends with the fact that, as a child, I was so buttoned down that even my crayons had to be stored in a certain order.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how old I was the first time someone gave me a box of crayons, but I do remember the order the colors were in when I opened the box.\u00a0 Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, black.\u00a0 Of course, the order was based on nothing more than the haphazard way whichever kid came before me had stuffed them into the box, but being the somewhat fastidious (!) child that I was, I assumed this was the way crayons were supposed to go.\u00a0 Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, black,\u00a0 Every time.\u00a0 It\u2019s been the default way I\u2019ve thought about the color spectrum ever since.<\/p>\n This is all the more vexing to the right side of my brain since, for the entirety of my professional career, I\u2019ve worked in a world of color, and should know better.\u00a0 Color wheels, color temperatures, color correction.\u00a0 Any way you slice it, there is no system of color calibration where red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown and black makes any sense, but if you ask me to sort anything by color \u2013 from crayons to clothing, my default method would rip the spectrum into nonsensical shreds.\u00a0 I know it doesn\u2019t make sense.\u00a0 It just is.<\/p>\n You know what?\u00a0 This 43 and still single thing? \u00a0Starting to make a bit more sense, is all I\u2019m saying.<\/p>\n However, it occurs to me there may be some use for this completely arbitrary thinking of color, and a way to press the reset button on what until now is one of the more egregious errors in my life.\u00a0 If for the foreseeable future, my visual world is composed of fogs and blurs, distortions and warps, shapes and colors, then it would seem like a good idea to use at least some of those elements in a positive way.<\/p>\n Or at least one of them.<\/p>\n OK, I say.\u00a0\u00a0 If colors are one of the primary distinguishing factors In my visual landscape, then let those colors be the framework around which the world will open up.\u00a0 And let\u2019s do it in the order that feels natural to me.\u00a0 Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, brown, black.\u00a0 If I want to feel the heat of Australia\u2019s red center, why not go? \u00a0If the ocean is calling, why not listen?\u00a0 If I want to see the expanse of the desert and cross the fields of Ireland, is there a good reason not to?\u00a0 I have all my faculties and, for now, five\u2026 well, if it were a dollar amount, I\u2019d call it somewhere around $4.12, so let\u2019s say four and change\u2026 of my senses.\u00a0 Am I really going to just sit around and wait for that to become an even four before deciding what to do next?<\/p>\n The truth is that I have some sight left today, and I may not tomorrow.\u00a0 Literally.\u00a0 While I don\u2019t discount the value of exploring the world from a completely sightless perspective (Erik Weihenmayer, anyone?), the \u201cglass half full\u201d side of my psyche says I\u2019ve been given a great gift. In the face of the only truth that matters\u2026 that time is fleeting. \u00a0I think I have to acknowledge that this rather unfortunate turn of events is also an opportunity.<\/p>\n So I\u2019m doing this.\u00a0 I\u2019m putting together a team, and I\u2019m doing this.\u00a0 I\u2019m convinced that there is a way to tell the stories I want to tell, and with at least some of the tools from my past, present and future to guide me.\u00a0 It\u2019s a mouthful, but here\u2019s one more bite.\u00a0 I\u2019m convinced that I can do more than just what would amount to an extended vacation.\u00a0 There is, to skewer a phrase, a mission to my madness, and to do what news folk call \u201cteasing ahead\u201d some good to be done for others as well.\u00a0 If you\u2019ll stick around, I think we can do a little bit of exploring, and a lot of good for a lot of people too<\/p>\n We\u2019ll do it one color at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The most surprising part about learning to navigate the world with very little sight is discovering how much of the heavy lifting has already been done, at least when it comes to making the world at least somewhat manageable. 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