{"id":4733,"date":"2016-04-26T04:38:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T08:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dsavannah.com\/blog\/?p=4733"},"modified":"2016-04-26T16:39:34","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T20:39:34","slug":"2016-v-is-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dsavannah.com\/blog\/index.php\/2016-v-is-for\/","title":{"rendered":"#dSavannahDefects – V is for…"},"content":{"rendered":"

My theme this year for the #AtoZchallenge<\/a> is #dSavannahDefects<\/b><\/span>, aka “What’s it’s like dealing with #InvisibleIllnesses”. Or, in short, {some of} what’s wrong with me.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"V\" … vision, pt 1
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So, I just read this really interesting article\/post\/Facebook note<\/a> by a dude who is a software engineer.<\/p>\n

This guy, Blake Ross<\/a> (that link is to his very own Wikipedia page), has just learned that most people can visualize things in their mind<\/b><\/span>.<\/p>\n

He can’t.<\/p>\n

He has a condition known as aphantasia<\/a>, or “a life without imagery.” Or, as he put it, a “blind mind’s eye”.<\/p>\n

The condition only just this past year received its official medical name. Because, who goes around thinking that something you experience every day isn’t something everyone experiences every day?<\/p>\n

(For me, the most “mind-blowing” related moment was when I learned that not everyone feels paralyzed in the moments before falling asleep. That the paralyzation is actually a symptom of narcolepsy<\/a>. {Not that I’ve been diagnosed with it, not officially.})<\/p>\n

So, Blake was randomly trolling on Facebook one day recently and ran across this article posted last June in the New York Times: <\/em>Picture This? Some Just Can\u2019t<\/a> by Carl Zimmer<\/span>, who had previously written about the research in 2010, for Discover<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anywho, the article blew Blake’s mind, because until he read it, he thought that when someone said “count sheep to go to sleep” they were using a metaphor. Or, as he put it, ‘I was equally sure nobody could \u201csee\u201d them with some fanciful \u201cmind\u2019s eye,\u201d either. That was just a colorful figure of speech, like \u201cthe bee\u2019s knees\u201d or \u201cthe cat\u2019s pajamas.\u201d’<\/p>\n

He asked a bunch of his friends “If I ask you to imagine a beach, how would you describe what happens in your mind?” And was astonished when most of them talked about really imagining it. Because he doesn’t.<\/p>\n

You really should go read his post<\/a>. (You may have to be logged in to Facebook to read it.) I’ll wait. It’s really intriguing and interesting.<\/p>\n

And it made me wonder: is there a disorder that is the opposite of that? Like, your mind’s eye sees too much? Because, when he says, “imagine a beach”, I totally do. I see, smell, hear probably all the beaches I’ve ever been on, at the same time. Or, I can flip through them like a slide-show.<\/p>\n

I hear the “milk voice” he describes, but I also hear full conversations. And music. And before I ever write anything, I usually see myself writing it in my mind’s eye. And not like the way they show someone writing in movies – closeup of the face, wide shot of them hunched at their desk, shot of the screen, etc. – but as I actually see it when I’m writing. <\/em>Like, in my head, I see my hands on the keyboard, I see the edges of my glasses, I see the tip of my nose, I see my computer, I see the words flying across the screen as I type…<\/p>\n

And, I have super-vivid dreams, too. So realistic that sometimes I wonder later if what I saw and experienced in my dream actually happened.<\/p>\n

And many times, I can’t sleep because of all the chatter and visions and images in my brain. Like, I haven’t been asleep all night, and it’s now 6:45am EST on Sunday, 4\/24\/17 (Happy 21st birthday, Spawn!), and I tried to go to sleep and I lay there and then the words for this post came and ran across my brain and ran across my brain until I couldn’t do anything but get up and write about this.<\/p>\n

… vision, pt 2<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Now, to talk about the vision<\/b><\/span> in my eyeballs. I actually wrote about Vision in last year’s #AtoZChallenge, so I won’t repeat myself – you can go read that post if you wish to learn about my own personal history with sight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To summarize:<\/p>\n