Nobody sits you down for this one. There is no diagnosis and no appointment. One day the small print moves, and you spend the next two years quietly adjusting around it while telling yourself it is the lighting in restaurants.
Your arms stop being long enough
It starts with the phone. You hold it a little further out, then a little further, and then one day you are at full stretch in reasonable light and it still is not sharp. Almost everyone hits this somewhere between 42 and 48.
The restaurant menu becomes a negotiation
Dim light plus small type plus a waiter standing there. Most people's first real moment of it happens in public, which is why it stings more than it should.
No obligation. It opens the official page.
Your phone brightness lives at maximum
You did not decide to do this. You just noticed one day that the slider had been at the far right for months and that turning it down felt like someone had thrown a blanket over the screen.
Pill bottles and price tags stop cooperating
The dosage line on a label. The unit price under the shelf edge. The small print that says whether the offer is on the 400g or the 800g. All of it designed by someone in their twenties.
You buy readers in three strengths and keep all three
One for the kitchen, one for the bedside, one in the car, and a mild fury every time you cannot find the pair you want. Nobody buys one pair. Everybody says they will.
Bright light stops being enough
This is the one that surprises people. More light helps at first and then stops helping, which is the clue that the problem has moved from the lens at the front to what is happening behind it.
