Just had a massive wake up call

[LollipopViolet]

Well, over the past weeks actually.

Buses are being a pain, not being in when they should be etc. My bus home has gone from every 20 minutes to every 30. I feel like a 2nd class citizen because I can't drive.

And not 5 minutes ago I've just had to admit I can't do something. I help out a lecturer filming ice hockey games, I operate a crowd facing camera, putting people's faces on the telly basically. For the last 2 games we've been short of crew, and now we've got lots of crew, my gran, gotta love her, keeps going on that I should be pushing myself, asking to be trained in other areas ie; game cameras or vision mixing.

The fact is, the reason I've not been trained on these is simple.

I can't be.

My lecturer basically told me I'm in the best role possible for my sight conditions, and I do enjoy it, I really do.

But just knowing this is as good as I can do, when all my mates are getting more experiences and a wider range of skills. It makes me sad

But let's face it, I can't follow a dot of a puck on a 1 inch monitor at game speeds.

And I never will be able to

but what you can do is pretty amazing

But you can do other things.

Ultimately we all have things we can't do whether we have a disability or not.

And while it is frustrating having to admit that we can't ddo something (been there, done that ) it's far better to focus on the things we can do than the things we can't.

Thank you both Had another game yesterday and something that crossed my mind is how much more jokey I can be now in terms of my sight. Got a few examples, none of them caused offense to me, and I happily responded back!

Example 1, our game announcer burped over the internal communications network, on a channel with me, himself and our director (one of my lecturers). AC, the announcer, then asked R (the lecturer) who was on the channel, and was told it was himself, R, and myself. Conversation carried on and AC said something about not wanting to deafen me, to which I responded "Oh no, I'm already visually impaired, I need my hearing!". AC asked if I was kidding, and when I said no, replied "Here, R, that's a novelty, employing a blind as a bat camera operator!". To which I came back with "Hey, visually impaired, thank you very much!". This was met with another response from AC of "Like I said, blind as a bat!"

As I said, I wasn't offended and everyone knew that It might seem that way in writing so just want to clear it up.

Then yesterday on the way to the rink, in a car with said lecturer, and 3 other people, one person, J, who is new to the area said, "Anyone know an optician, you're all blind as anything so might as well ask you." Now, he's sitting next to me, he looks at me then realizes that what he said might possibly have offended (it didn't but hey, it's always amusing to me when people say things like that and forget how bad my sight is!) and says "Oooh, sorry!"

Then coming back, he was talking about one of our players to me and said, "I don't know if you've seen Player X, blah blah blah" to which I quickly respond "J, from where I film, I don't see much at all!"

Like I said, although what's written may SEEM offensive, in context, it was actually really funny, and just being able to be easy going about my sight is proving to be such an ice breaker, because people know they can say what they want, within reason. The only reason I pick up on the blind comments, is because I'm not and don't want people to think that!

Visually impaired camera operator, is quite a novel concept though!

Wow, sorry for rambling!