the second life of marx dudek

This is a really terrible habit of mine, and one that I have not been able to break, in ten years of writing online.

I am starting my blog over.  Again.

The past year and a half in RL was difficult for me.  It left my mind in a very unhappy, unsafe and uncomfortable place – a place from which I am only now truly stepping away from.  I won’t delve into details.  Those who need to know, know.  Those who knew, helped me through it.  Those who helped me through it have earned a very special place in my heart.

And now, I find myself emerging again.  Finding my own limits.  Making my own boundaries.  Deciding what I’m okay with.  Determining to be genuinely true to myself, and to others.  Coming out of my shell – a little at a time, perhaps, but making slow and steady progress.

In SL, I am happily partnered to a very caring, very sincere, very loving individual.  Someone I have had the wonderful good fortune to have flown across the Atlantic to meet in person.  Someone who has become an integral part of my every morning, and an essential part of my weekends.  Someone I cannot imagine having to do without.

In RL, I am now single for 18 months.  Healing.  Hiding.  Surviving.  Deciding whether a life in the company of another is preferable to a life of solitude.  Not particularly rushed to find an answer to the question.

In SL, I am trying to find myself again, to reclaim myself and rediscover the wonder of self-exploration that made Second Life such a wonderful experience to begin with.  Sometimes I wonder if that’s possible.  Part of the magic was the newness of the experience, the ability to immerse myself fully in a world where it seemed anything was possible.   I still want to believe in that.

I realize that baring my soul in a public forum places me at risk of ridicule.  In a world where names and faces can be as real, or as unreal, as the names and faces behind them, our virtual life can be as honest or as dishonest as we will it to be – and indeed, the virtual lives of those around us.  So few of us in Second Life share our RL identity to more than a handful of people – that “hiding in plain sight” often makes a person hyper-sincere.  Sometimes that hyper-sincerity manifests itself in intense malice, mockery or bullying.  A good friend of mine wisely said, “Second Life is not a utopia – it’s not because there are people in it.”  No matter how perfect any locale may be, no matter how far we run away to get there, that part of us which we desperately seek to run away from catches up with us.  Some even bring it with them willingly.  So the glitch that is greater than any server malfunction, greater than any asset crash – is that of simple human nature.  Be it the tendency to share too much, or not to share enough – or to point the finger and laugh at the one caught in a moment of vulnerability, or embarrassment, or anxiety, or shame.  We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

And yet we live in a world where the broadcasting of every minute detail of our lives has become the norm.  The concept of privacy seems almost alien, as Facebook does what the CIA and KGB could only have dreamed of accomplishing – convincing people to hand over not only their papers, but their receipts, their whereabouts, even the key to their diary – all willingly and with a smile.  Our accomplishments and our failures are on display for the world to see.  It seems almost trivial that walking around without clothes is still indecent – we have never been more naked as a society than we are right now.

So, even as I buck against the trend of RL full-disclosure, I seek to share my experiences as a virtual being.  In doing so, I realize I am sharing even more of myself than I would if I were pouring this all into a first-life LiveJournal.  I am rather disappointed that I did not maintain a continued and unbroken written record of my two and a half years of virtuality.  I can, however, try to start now.

Hello.  My name is Marx Dudek.  And, inspiration willing … this is my life.