Virtual Me

It feels strange to be sitting here in the Twitter Cafe in Second Life. Stranger still is the fact that I’m actually still here. Me – Ysabel.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it through 2008 much less 2007 but here I am. Who knows what 2009 will bring.

I think the last project I was about to embark on was talking with Ysabel_Ruth about building the Girl Geek Dinner Presence in SL. Poor girl. She tried. Lord knows she tried but the New World Grid Server just wasn’t cutting it.

I think we’re actually going to have to work closely together, Ysabel_Ruth and I, in the build. I’ll construct parts of it on the Second Life Grid, then I’ll download it to the RL hard drive and Ysabel_Ruth can hopefully upload it to the New World Grid site.

What we’re really waiting for is full or even partial interoperability between the Open Sims and the Second Life Grid. I have a feeling news of that should start popping up in the 1st QTR of this year.

I could be busier in SL and actually, if you were to stop and think about it – it seems as if I am.

RL event live streaming into the Twitter Cafe and setting up an RL IT company on what use to be my home is enough to make any virtual gal busy. I hope to really get into full swing with the Empowered by English Classes and Virtual Classroom integration. We’ll see.

So many projects on the horizon for 2009. I just hope I get to tackle each one and have them materialize here in SL.

Well, Happy New Year nonetheless.

It’s nearing 7:30 in the morning and the hint of daylight is starting to show itself like a faint glow behind the hotel next to this building. I can hear people beginning to stir in their flats getting ready to work. My work is mostly on the computer, if it’s not in front of people – teaching.

I tried to stay up as late as I could hoping he does his usual routine of waking up early. That way, I can have the space on the bed, to myself. I miss my King Sized bed. It sure would come in handy during these very trying times. On a King Sized bed you could be on one side and never know that the other person is there.

In Second Life the crack of dawn doesn’t really mean anything. You could always change the environment’s sun position. In real life the crack of dawn signifies another night of staying up trying to heal a hurt that won’t seem to go away (seeing as it keeps getting added). The phrase, “there’s always tomorrow” never applies in this case. Tomorrow becomes another day of trying to forget the hurt or heal it – which ever comes first.

The End.

Intimacy can be frightening to so many people. Some people think it is about giving up your SELF to someone and therefore loosing control. Some people have deep buried hurt from past events that are within their subconscious – even they are not aware. Others simply do not know how to love.

Does anyone really know how to love?

I do.

Unconditionally.

Before you can fully and truly love someone else, you need to first love yourself. This is what has been crossing my mind ever since I started dying inside. I guess it’s my attempt to grasp some meaning into why *intimacy* seems such a painful issue. I say painful because it is avoided at all costs.

How I wish this gun was real. How I wish that yellow ball was a real bullet aimed at the REAL issue. The root of the emotion. The root of the fear.

It would be so much easier to just point the gun at my SELF and shoot. At least this death would be much quicker as opposed to the slow and soft killing that has gone on for months.

I'm Baaack.

I’m baaaaack. After getting my account suspended in Second Life I finally decided to un-suspend it, but that decision did not come easy.

It was enough that my counterpart, Ysabel, still had ties to that virtual world. It’s even more than enough that Ysabel decided to take on the project of creating a Girl Geek Dinners presence in an Open Sim Grid so, why would I even want to return.

Why? Because. I rationalized it this way…

I was the first to get all of us inside Second Life and I was the one that needed to create Ysabel to fend off all the annoying IM’s for the times when I just wanted to shop in peace. I was also the one that decided to teleport Ysabel into the watchmaker’s shop on Cisco that fateful Christmas Eve 2006 . Since I was pinnacle in the “great change” of my RL I figure I might as well keep my foot inside Second Life – just in case.

Returning back felt strange. Everything felt the same except I knew the client had changed a lot since I last logged on. The one set back of getting suspended  is that you loose all your land, your inventory and your friends.  Was I sad? Nope. Not really. The thought DID cross my mind of how much money I spent on the items in my inventory. The loss of land was already an experience I had shared with Ysabel and with my ’self’  during my last few days in Second Life so I was practically immuned to the emotional feeling of loss.

The real change that affected me was my appearance. It was as if I was given a new skin, a new body, a whole new look. Granted, it was a look taken from one of the default avatar’s but nonetheless, it was new to me.

I liked the new look but the *shop till you drop* gal in me couldn’t resist the urge to get a new skin and shape, just because. After only a few teleports, I managed to quickly pick out a new shape and skin that I was surprisingly rather pleased with. My RL quickly settled into my new look. The next task on the list was to teleport to my First Land. I was a little frightened at first, thinking I would have lost THAT too. I was so relieved to land on the same familiar white platform and find myself, once again, in the same familiar office – up high in the sky.

Being around familiar things makes for a nice feeling, especially after someone’s been away for so long.

Oh! I also noticed that all my groups were gone, just like my friends. That was when it suddenly hit me!

My second chance at Second Life was meant to be. It was no time wasted thinking about “Should I go or should I stay?” (this would be taken as “should I go inside Second Life AGAIN or should I stay in Real Life).

I had carefully thought out all the reasons why I should leave it for dead and yet, I calculatingly rationalized reasons why I should go back. But seeing the BLANK Group List, the BLANK friend’s list and the EMPTY Inventory folder while sitting at my desk rang a bell, LOUD and CLEAR.

This second chance in Second Life would be different. No ‘friending’ people I did not know in Real Life first. No joining groups that were just ‘groups’. No collecting, buying or receiving items into my inventory that did not have a TRUE purpose or that did not fit in to what my second purpose would be – to use Second Life as a bridge from Real Life into Second Life- just as we always knew it would be. From now on, everything in my Second Life would be linked to a bonafide REAL person, bonadife REAL Life Group etc …  It sounds almost hypocritical, I know. Especially since I’m talking about being inside and operating inside a virtual world but there really is a sense to all of this. The only thing that I can come up with right now to keep your rebuttles at bay is “consciousness”.

Touching Base

First things first. I felt Ysabel and I needed to touch base. Just so we were on the same page with things. I needed to tell her about what my purpose for returning to Second Life actually was (both the rationalized one and the AHA MOMENT one). Ysabel agreed with my reasoning and was also a little envious at my NEW second chance. You don’t get too many opportunities at a second chance, especially a second chance at a Second Life so you best believe that I was going to take THIS opportunity, one careful step by one careful step.

*Poof* to shop.

After our short meeting I was itching to shop, to get out of this new skin and shape and into another new skin and shape.  So …. *poof* I went. Only in Second Life can you do this. If you *poof* in Real Life, it usually means forever.

The scenario: Two people sitting in a room both in front of their computers. One in a virtual world and one on social media networking sites (twitter, facebook etc…)

Parallel Worlds.      Literally.

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. – HH the Dalai Lama

If this is true, then is technology forcing us to interact in other ways? Of course it is. A perfect example is from the first sentence of this post. It’s nothing new when I say that communication today, more than ever has brought and is bringing people close together. On the flip side, we are growing farther and farther apart.

You don’t seem to think so? Just give it time and soon you’ll realize that time spent on the internet interacting with other people has brought nothing more than a long period of stagnation in your lifeline. Currently, you see these internet interactions as adding value to your life as you gather *important* contacts, saved up for a rainy day. It may appear that connecting with people you have never met before is a new and somewhat heightened or intense way of conversing because you  rationalize that it is only their words and their thoughts and their ideas that you are connecting with.

Think about it though. Is it really? I mean, is it really? OR, are you simply gathering up a safe group of likeminded people who think like you and thus there need not be too much effort spent on arguing. Just a thought.

Are people getting so tired of trying to make their journey through every day life that it seems just so much easier to surround yourself with people that actually think like you? And even if you connect with others that don’t think like you, it’s far safer to hide behind your internet connection and type out your opinions on blogs, comment fields, tweets, etc ….  Again, just a thought.

Many thoughts have flooded my mind of late. Am I wasting time with all these internet interactions?

I remember a much more simpler and satisfying life before the internet. Sure it’s great to be able to be in touch with people from such a vast distance. Sure it’s great to be able to connect with others whom you never would have connected with, if it weren’t for the internet.

Then again, I have to ask myself. “If it weren’t for the internet, I would never have moved to Germany.” If it weren’t for the internet, I would never have known such a thing as New Media. If it weren’t for the internet, I would have been a successful advertising/marketing somebody using technology to empower her career. Go figure.