Alas, I am going through a similar problem. I use to be able to work my nine to five job all day, spend four hours with my family in the evening, and draw til 2am every night. Throughout my life all I have ever needed was three hours sleep. Recently I have begun to get very tired at 11pm. It appears I need to come to grips with the fact at 37 I need more sleep.

Danny -- thanks for your wonderful drawings. You've inspired me! I'm going to try to draw and paint too. I LOVE looking at your drawings and your books! You're right about the glasses! After 40 I had to have reading glasses with me at all times! My sister who's younger resists them at all costs and I hate to show her things when she doesn't have glasses on cause I know she can't see anything! Take Care and Happy WEEKEND!

I have quietly followed your website closely since discovering you about a year and a half ago. I think your drawing is fantastic and your words very wise and well-chosen.

My vision also was always "perfect". It was only after taking a job which involved being on the computer for eight hours steady a day that I noticed by the end of the day I had trouble reading a book or seeing what I was drawing. That was in my eary mid-forties. Now, into my late forties, I find I need my reading glasses close at hand most of the time. I really think extensive computer use speeds up this middle-aged vision deterioration thing.

If I could be so bold as to make a suggestion, although you may know this already, I got the smallest magnification I could find which worked for me at the time - 1.5x - and still find them adequate.

Another tip: If you have on your reading glasses and hold a book or pen in your hand, you'll always look busy - even if you're not really doing anything.

Consider yourself blessed to have had perfect vision for so much of your life. Nearsightedness plus presbyopia means keeping an array of glasses for seeing far, middle and near. To the other challenges of drawing, add focal length wrangling - the subject is clear, the paper is blurry. No, wait, the paper is clear but now the subject is blurred.
Could it be that aging vision is God's way of making it harder to see the wrinkles in the mirror? Maybe it's all in the eye of the beholder.

Welcome to the club, my friend.
This change in eyesight is the single biggest thing that ticks me off about growing older ...

It's time for shopping! The wilder, and cooler looking the reading glasses are, the more of a fashion statement it becomes.
http://www.peepers.com/products/peepers-reading-glasses-aba-daba-doo-1-50-7767.html

I just found out I need to wear glasses, too! My husband has worn glasses his entire life so when he picked out a new pair recently, they were practically invisible on his face. I, on the other had, am looking forward to wearing my new facial bling. I bought a pair of cool red specs last weekend!

I have been wearing glasses since I was two. It is not so bad. (but I don't rememeber anything else) I can't imagine living without them, I can't read a thing or cross a street safely without my glasses on. What will happen if they break one day...

Don't feel bad about it--anything for the art, right? :)

I've been really, really nearsighted since I was five, and it's getting worse with all the writing I do. But it's all good. Maybe I'll go blind and write and Braille in my old age.

When I reached the ripe old age of nine I had to start wearing glasses for nearsightedness(myopia). I was so myopic that I had to wear contacts or glasses (neither of which were ever comfortable to me)even to read, much less recognize a friend's face on the street. At age forty-five I had to add reading glasses to the mix, necessary when I wore my contacts. At age fifty-three I said "Enough!", and had laser surgery to correct my vision. And now I can see everything far and near without corrective lenses for the first time since the fourth grade! I'm reading more and drawing more, feeling younger and constantly amazed at modern science. For anyone who is curious about corrective eye surgery, I highly recommend talking to your optometrist or opthamologist about it.

I've worn glasses since third grade, hit the bifocal age at 40, trifocals at 50 but couldn't see well out of the trifocal part, so discovered I have to TAKE OFF my glasses for anything close up, and I am the designated 'reader' of restaurant menus! I can read in bed! Finally I can see again with NO glasses, the only drawback being I now have to wear better eye makeup. As they say, 'if ya live long enough...'

Age creeps up on all of us I guess LOL I've worn glasses or contacts since I was 6, and now that I'm older I'm wearing those progressive lens type of bifocals. As long as I can see I'm thankful and try to remember to enjoy every little beautiful thing that crosses my sight. Top of the list are butterflies, wildflowers and the moon when it comes out late in the afternoon while the sun is still up.

Jan Blencowe

Welcome to my world! This has just started to happen to me in the last few months. I am stalling going to the Eye Doc, as I don't want to pay for glasses, and I certainly don't want to wear them. Will have to go eventually. Having a tough time reading.

Argh ! sounds so familiar. What makes it worse is when you wear them for a few years, then all of a sudden you need to get stronger ones !!!!! Scary. I now need them to draw, but not to paint until I get to detailing at the end. I have the same nightmares, that eventually the drugstore will not have a strong enough pair for me to see, but I still only need 1.75 and it looks like they have them all the way up to "3" in lots of increments.
Aging is not for wusses.

I am back in California for the summer break and am doing an internship as a chaplain in a hospital out here. The chaplains all know that I am Presbyterian (they are all Catholic except for one who's Episcopalian).

Well, one day we chaplains were talking with each other and this one chaplain started talking about LASIK and I commented about how I had LASIK done a couple of years ago and how it's been great. Well, he started talking about how he's usually had great vision but that now he's having trouble seeing things up close. So I said, "Oh! That's presbyopia!" My comment wasn't really listened to and the chaplains continued to talk and again it came up again and I said, "That's presbyopia!" It was dropped again and came up a third time and I mentioned that it was presbyopia again and the one chaplain finally said to me, "What is this presbyopia that you keep on talking about?!" And I explained it's the aging of the eyes (having spent much time in the optometrist's office, I am well aware of the various eye problems) and the chaplain said to me, "OH! When you said it was presbyopia, I thought it had something to do with being Presbyterian!"

So that's my story about presbyopia. That and my dad also had LASIK done when he was older and they corrected his vision such that one eye sees far and the other eye sees close (so that he won't have to wear glasses for his impending presbyopia) and his brain has compensated so that he does not notice that at all.