There are two people you tend to interact with in a traditional glasses buying experience. First your optometrist who gives you the prescription and then the optician or in other words who you buy the glasses from. These days it is also common to buy glasses online and then just go into the optician to get them adjusted after the fact.

Vision insurance is commonly offered by jobs, but it's coverage is all over the place. Some will cover only your appointment and only one appointment per year. If you have something go wrong with your vision and need follow up appointments they wouldn't be covered. Some cover glasses, some cover only the lenses of glasses not the frames, some cover part of contacts for a year, and some will fully cover glasses. It's so varied and confusing. It's easy to be uncertain about what is covered in yours.

Shopping for glasses and contacts can be equally as frustrating. Lets start with glasses. You have two options: online or in store. In store, you have the advantage of you can talk to an optician. The problem is that these days a lot of the opticians are there to get you to buy glasses. They don't care about the art of the trade. They don't care about making sure the frames are actually a good fit for you and your face. Often these opticians that I consider bad opticians work on commission. If they sell you a more expensive frame they're going to get more money from it. Good opticians are going to point out if a frame is too big or too small for your face.

You can also shop online for glasses. There are three numbers on the inside of your glasses which are in millimeters that help determine the dimensions of the glasses. These are useful when shopping online. Some sites online let you try frames before you buy and you ship the frames back, an example being Warby Parker. Some you can return glasses after buying like eyebuydirect. Some you cannot return no matter what like Zenni.

I cannot find glasses that I like at the moment. I have a very small head. I wear the child size adaptor for the VR headset when I play VR. I want small frames that also look masculine and professional. I used to buy women's frames that had a masculine look to them or smaller men's frames. Fashion lately doesn't allow for that. Rectangular small frames are out for women and men's frames are only getting larger. A bad optician will tell you "we can adjust any frames to fit your face" just to try to get the sale. That isn't true. I've had a pair of frames that were too big for me before. Adjusted as small as they could, I was still having them fall off my face. It's a frustrating issue.

You might be thinking, well go for contacts then! That's what I'm doing. But it's not the solution I want. I don't want to have to buy contacts because what I want isn't offered. Contacts are a lot more expensive and aren't covered as much by insurance. My insurance will cover 3 months worth of contacts, but not a whole year. Other insurances might be more or less, but I don't get a choice of eye insurance. It's just what my job offers.

I just wish we didn't put glasses as fashion first over function. I don't want to be forced into something that I don't like. It makes me sad that I can't find what I want. I have the money to pay for even expensive glasses, yet I can't find ones I like that fit small enough. I'm going to keep wearing the pair I'm wearing that are a slightly incorrect prescription at home and then wearing contacts on days I'm going outside the house. I don't feel safe driving wearing glasses that are no longer my current prescription.