Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think a certain “agit-blogger” has a clandestine crush on Grace McDunnough.

He certainly can’t seem to make it through the day without paying attention to her in some way, shape or form.  Of course, it’s always negative – but we’ve come to expect that.  However, it’s a little like watching the bully tug on the pigtails of the freckle-faced redhead girl that he secretly likes, because he’s not socially adept enough to express his crush on her in any other way.

Ah, unrequited love.  It is a sad and beautiful thing.

Well, in most other cases, at least.

Too much caffeine.  Bad bunny.  You’re supposed to be sleeping right now.

Making things is one of my greatest joys in Second Life.  Sometimes I daydream of winning the lottery, or finding some generous philanthropist with whom I strike up a conversation about virtual worlds.  I give such a winning testimonial about Second Life that I am awarded an endowment, so I can work eight hours a day at stretching my creativity to its limits and creating dozens and dozens of lovely virtual things to brighten the lives of others.

Oh well, I can dream.

This dream has had me thinking a great deal about what is truly important in life.  How many of us labor in the service of a job that we truly love – the kind of job that we would willingly do for free because it is just that fulfilling?  Does SL fill that void for us, let us live the dream of gainful self-employment – or maybe not even necessarily profitability, but something that we love doing?  I know that the things that I do in SL right now – designing T-shirts, making furniture and various knick-knacks – would totally be something that I would love to do in RL.  My little brownstone in Paxson (Zindra) even mirrors the comfortable old building in which I’d love to set up shop, with my own little cozy living space on the top-most floor.

I think about this a lot – perhaps too much – when I’m at work.  I think about designs.  I think about layouts.  I think about patterns and cushions and woodgrains.  For a while, I worried that perhaps this was obsessing over SL.  However, I realize now that my heart is yearning for something as artistically and emotionally satisfying in “real life” as I have in my virtual life.  Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for the job that I have, and a boss who seems to see potential within me.  Still, as I sit and stare at folders, and purchase orders, and spec sheets and legal documentation, I wonder … is this where I’m going to be in five years?  Ten years?  And if so, will I still be feeling the way I’m feeling right now?

Right now, in this economy, it’s not the time for me to rock the boat.  My RL is somewhat burdened with personal debt that I need to get under control.  Capitalism runs on credit, and credit is a cruel and harsh slave-master once you submit to it.  One thing that I’ve found Second Life has done for me is cause me to spend less money.  When I can find similar creature comforts in virtual goods in a micro-economy, there’s less temptation to overspend on real-life things that I really don’t need.  Since I’ve had the shop in Zindra, which has been about a year now, I have not had to deposit a single dollar of my own money into Second Life.  I even have a comfortable little nest egg.  This was the first year that I was able to pay my annual premium membership entirely from in-store sales and still have a substantial balance left over.  Sales have dropped off quite a bit in this past month, but that’s to be expected as we crawl into summer.

When the economy picks up, though, and when I get my personal credit crisis a bit more in control, I’d like to start making some RL versions of some of the items I sell in Second Life.  Actually, I could start selling T-shirts now, through Cafepress or Zazzle – but I’ll need to test-order something first, to make sure I’m comfortable with the quality of the finished product.  I’ve also had one or two Second Life-themed books in mind.  I just wonder, and worry a little, how many years our grid has left in its lifespan.  For all of the talk about constant quarterly increases, I’ve seen a slow-but-steady decline in concurrent users.  They’re down to an average high of 50,000 from 80,000 just a little over a year ago.  Granted, quite a few of those were campbots – but I can’t believe that bots made up around 30,000 users.  Perhaps a third of that, I’d think.  Of course, I could be wrong.

I want to follow my heart in as many aspects of my life – of both lives – as possible.  I’ve let several decades slip by me as I’ve tried to find happiness and fulfillment in relationships, only to come up empty on the other side.  I’ve lurched from job to job, very rarely unemployed but also very rarely overly enthusiastic over the type of work I’ve found myself doing.  While I don’t buy into the myth that success is available to anyone who truly wants it – Capitalism can’t succeed if there are more millionaires than there are laborers – I do believe that you won’t know if you can succeed unless you try.  It’s all a matter of keeping the proper perspective, and knowing that failure is a real possibility – and knowing that, allowing yourself the freedom to fail.  To paraphrase the wonderful Douglas Adams, successful flight involves aiming for the ground … and missing.

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.