I don’t believe in destiny. I don’t believe in a lot of things, actually … and that’s always made me a little different than a lot of people around me. I believe in things I can hold, see, hear, smell, grab, taste, hold on to …
I don’t know what it was about Second Life that drew me in so deeply. The fantasy aspect? A premature mid-life crisis? I’m amused by those snobs in SL that say they’re nothing like the losers who become so immersed that they don’t know reality from a blip on a screen, yet – like these so-called losers – they can be found logged on and intertwined like the rest of us … for hours, days, weeks, months … logged on and obsessed like the rest of us, mesmerized not only by the seemingly flawless recreation of the physical world, but also in the beauty that this world brings out in the rest of us … a world where our noses, our handicaps, our weight problems, our ages, our skin blemishes, our speech impediments, our social hang-ups, and our pasts no longer hold us back. In Second Life, we’re all beautiful – in and out – just like we want to be in the Real.
Although blind faith has never been anything I subscribed to, hope has always been a friend of mine: hope for a life different than the one I had; for a different future; for a resurrecting, transforming love … something different than the shut doors, the “not-good-enoughs”, and the superficiality of today’s consumer culture. How I ever thought I would find something different in a world where superficiality is the base component of its very existence will always allude me – but, hope was what I had in this world not seen before, the world that made us all more alive than we are in our Real.
But, even though emotions seemed stronger, love seemed more real, and where things seemed more possible than they ever could otherwise … it never amounted to more than grasping at empty pixels. For those that claim this is the new economy, fortunes have been won (and lost) by the stroke of a pen at a computer lab somewhere in Silicon Valley when economy or real estate has been adjusted for the benefit of the many, or for the corporate image. It is all elusive, all unreal, all grasping at phantoms who seem so real … so beautiful at first.
So, what does that make all of us … those who have been spending the better part of our lives day in and day out, hours and weeks … pretending in a world of make believe? Is SL really the next economy, the future of social networking, or has the whole holodeck nature of it turned it into something more tragic? What do we gain in the world – in life – spending hour after hour in front of a wide plasma screen emoting in a chat box? Even when we fall in love – as so many say they do here – how does it benefit our lives when that life “together” can only be imagined … never shared, or enjoyed with another sitting beside you? Is it really the same sitting in a fake hot-air balloon and floating over virtual Venezia … or to hold the one of a very real lover while traveling down the canals of the very real one? Can it replace seeing the smile of surprise when giving a gift to your husband or wife, feeling their lips against your ear as they whisper sweet-nothings? And, for those who are here because they have had the real and lost … does it really replace what you had before? Or does it just keep you from ever having it again?
I came to Second Life on New Year’s Eve one year (the first time) … looking for something. And, although the ensuing months brought plenty of laughter, smiles, tears, and joy … one thing it never brought me was anything real. It felt real – absolutely – and in many of my virtual relationships, things still feel very real.
But, it isn’t … and it can’t be … not as long as it keeps us from reaching out and making things real; not as long as it prevents us from enjoying our own real lives; not as long as it robs us of the courage to make those real lives better. In that sense, SL isn’t an adventure … it is emotional heroine.
And, today … I’m pulling the needle out of my arm.
Those who know and love me know how to contact me … and I hope they will continue to do so. But, I can’t live in Pleasantville anymore. It isn’t real. I’m not throwing anything away … I’m casting my bread on the water … and what comes back (as the book of fables says) … was real all along.
Here’s to Real Life!
Unplugging …



































