I have profound hearing loss. I don’t often reflect on it and the experience in a conscious way, so I thought I’d write down a few thoughts.
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- Large groups are lonely places to be.
- Speech to text has quietly changed my life.
- It seems that hearing loss can cause dementia. I hope I don’t get dementia.
- How other handle my hearing reveals deep character.
- I feel absurdly privileged. Many with my level of hearing loss face far greater challenges in life.
- I remember my mother’s voice. Sometimes I’m not sure when I stopped hearing her voice, and started hearing the voice my hearing aids think my mother has.
- I can’t hear thunder any more.
- I also can’t hear the loud children on my flight or the trucks outside at six in the morning, so there’s that.
- I don’t think my dog understands.
- Lip reading is a super power.
- The pandemic was not good for super powers on the whole. Let’s not do that again.
- Nothing ever really sounds bad to me. An out-of-tune guitar might not sound right, but it won’t sound bad.
- Moving to a country where you don’t speak the language, nor can you hear that language, is a challenge I should have expected.
- The loneliness of not speaking the language is much like the loneliness of hearing loss.
- I wonder how long I’ll have what I have.
- “Never mind,” “don’t worry about it”—
- It’s a wonder that more research isn’t going towards cochlea hair cell regeneration. You’re probably going to lose your hearing. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to worry about that? The market’s pretty massive.
- So too is the market for male pattern baldness, I suppose.
- It seems easier to solve AR speech-to-text than to regrow hair cells in the cochlea. Too bad captions can’t capture music.
- I am at the mercy of speech-to-text providers. They’ve created inclusion and togetherness and a career path for me. They also have the power to take it all away.
- I can’t hear in the dark.