Eighteen!

 I'm at the age of majority now. ;)  Unless it's in dog years, then I'm really 126 years old.

Not much has changed since a year ago. I'm logging into SL just to spend time with Wolfgang or to shop the weekend sales.

I'm still going through chemo irl, although I'll be going through CAR T-cell therapy; T-cell collection happens next week.

I'm still with Wolfgang. He talks about his addiction to me. :D  Of course, we're restructuring our relationship again.

I lost my RL job last December and had a hard time looking for another job. It's just as well. I get so exhausted from the chemo anyway; my 100% is a whole lot less than my usual, so I wouldn't be able to give them what they pay for.

Also, I'm starting to think of how I would want my will executor to deal with my Second Life assets and businesses.

That said, I'll be in SL for as long as I can.  :)

I am seventeen, going on ...

In the past, August would bring a significant change in my life. This year, my real life changed in January when I started chemo treatment for multiple myeloma. I'm still going through it, and I don't think I can handle any additional change in my life right now, real or virtual.

Or maybe changes are starting this month but I wouldn't realize them until later.

Because of lack of time or energy, I come into Second Life mostly for shopping the weekend sales or meeting up with Wolfgang. He remains my emotional support through this challenging time.

Besides those, nothing else is interesting enough to mention.

I expect I'd still be in SL for at least another year. :)

Sweet Sixteen

 It's my 16th rez day anniversary.

I'm still around, but I think I've matured a lot now. Sometimes, I wonder if I've gotten bored with everything Second Life. But when I stay away too long, I miss it.

Sometimes, I miss places that exist only in my head. SL places are somewhat more tangible than those imaginary places and I miss SL places too. I think it is one of the reasons why I enjoy having a private sim where I can have a bit more control over the spaces where I create memories.

Of course, I get bored with my builds so I pull them back into my inventory and create new spaces. I'm sure the constant change bugs Wolfgang, but he doesn't have much of a say now after I "kicked him out" as co-owner of the sim. I need my autonomy, especially when designing the sim. He likes my decorating style anyway, so he doesn't complain too much.

Our relationship is changing again. I get bored with what we do too. I don't know if we'll find the same old passion, so we'll see.

However, he doesn't understand that it's more difficult to disentangle now after 10.5 years together and with multiple pairs. Each pair is an emotional knot that binds us. Even if the sexual passion is gone, the love and friendship is still there.

We talked about what RL would be like without SL. It would definitely be boring. Wolfgang wondered if Meta would take the place of SL; I said I don't think it will. Meta's graphics are crappy and are devoid of any creativity. The people of SL, especially the creators, made it what it is. And Meta is going to have a hard time building a community like that. It's not just a social thing; it's also a creativity thing.

Maybe that might be something to look forward to. Where would Second Life be on my 32nd rez day anniversary?

Fifteen

Who knew I would last in Second Life this long? When I first started in SL, I figured I'd stay a couple of hours. That's a very long couple of hours. :)

Wolfgang and I got back together earlier this year. For a few months.

But, as I said, a lot has happened in real life. And I couldn't justify losing sleep for a relationship that keeps me an arm's length away. I had to take care of me. Alone. We never stopped communicating by email, and we're starting again to see each other inworld, but rarely.

The friendship is still there. And he keeps his promise to never leave me no matter what happens between us.

I did not move to Washington State as I had planned last year. A lot has happened that caused my moved to be postponed several times. But I finally moved back to the Pacific Northwest late last month. Just across the Columbia River. That's this year's almost-August significant change in my life. :)

Life feels lighter at the moment. However, there has been a lot of uncertainty the past few years. The past year with COVID and the blatant racism in the US made me feel that uncertainty so much more. I try to quell the anxiety that's just lurking under the surface. I am well aware that life could change in an instant.

In my first couple of years in SL, I experience the pain of the world's transience. It was the nature of virtual worlds to keep changing. People and places disappeared quickly and too often. Lately, it feels like real life is imitating virtual life. 

I've never deleted any of my many alts. I've put them in hibernation, yes, but I can log them in again anytime, if I wanted to. Can't do that in real life.

But maybe I still have a few decades left. In RL and in SL.

 

Fourteen +

I just realized that I forgot to write a post for my 14th rez day! It just came and went. That's why the title of this post has a "+" in it. :)

But, as usual, August brings changes to my life. This time, to my real life. In August, I got approval to work remotely permanently, so I'm moving back to Washington State. California is my family's home, but it feels like Washington State is my soul's home.

For some reason, just the planning of the move already wakes up my muse. I'm getting so many creative ideas! Not just for SL, but also for real-life projects.

In fact, I'm relearning Blender (for the umpteenth time). Hopefully, it will be productive this time.

Earlier this year, I let Wolfgang go after I realized that the relationship will never be balanced. I was surprised that it affected him much more than I expected. We remain good friends; we still share news by email, he still tries to seduce me, but we don't meet anymore. I still adore him; that won't change. But I was wasting time and effort on something that doesn't give back as much as I give. By a mile.

So, this time, I'm loving me and taking care of me. And I'm creating again.

Thirteen

Again, August proves to be life-changing. Real life has a big influence this time. My mother passed away on August 11 this year.

Caring for her was a big part of my life in the past seven and a half years. And now, that responsibility has been lifted from my shoulders.

I've been alone before, but now the aloneness feels different. In the past, it always felt like an adventure, an assertion of my independence. This time, I'm not sure how it feels. At least, not yet.

It feels quiet. It feels peaceful. It feels like I could breathe again. It feels zen-like. I am more in the moment. I have more patience about the few minutes that it takes to do something simple and mundane. I stopped rushing.

I've spent less and less time in Second Life the past few years because of the real-life demands on my time, including my own health and job issues. I still don't have the luxury of time as I did when I first started SL, but now I have a little bit more. But is that enough?

A dear friend said that life doesn't have meaning. I know that. Life inherently doesn't have meaning, so we must individually give it meaning. I lost the meaning in my real life many years ago. And I think I've lost the meaning in my Second Life too.

But I'm still here. In a new phase of my life. Undefined. Uncertain.

In search for new meaning.

Twelve years

When I was twelve years old in real life, my body started that biological monthly "ritual" that differentiated a child from a young woman. I had already started wearing a bra several months before that.

Opal is twelve years old today.


There are no physical or virtual manifestations of changes due to her age, besides the continual updates in technology (her avatar is almost entirely in mesh now) and a meaningful shift in her coloring (which has nothing to do with her age).

In 2006, I started with fair skin and red hair. On my first day, I shaped her face into the one that I had been drawing since I learned to draw as a child. And I gave her fiery hair because I used to imagine that I was a feisty Irish woman in a previous life.

I tried different skin and hair colors through the years, especially during my virtual fashion model phase. I had tan skin and black hair at one point, then I realized too many models had that look, and I wanted to look different, so I kept the red hair.

Soon after the Charlottesville incident in August 2017, I went back to tan skin and black hair, which is my real-life coloring. It was a quiet political statement. I am a Filipina-American.

However, I kept the same eyes with blue and green colors, like Australian opals, because, after all, she is Opal.

Opal in first land 2006 and 2018

Maybe the most significant change in my virtual life is my relationship with Wolfgang.

I met him in March 2012. I was finishing up my book which I published in May the same year. I thought he would be just another "dim sum." We broke up in January 2015. By then, he was the longest relationship I've had — almost three times longer than the second longest. The next year, we were back together. I don't even know precisely when that happened. We were supposed to be just friends the second time around.

We're still together.

Neither of us planned for a long-term relationship. Neither of us specifically wished for one. We are both polyamorous.

During our first three years, we argued a lot and, each time we did, splitting up was always an option on the table. Nowadays, the option is still on the table, but neither of us seriously consider it anymore.

Some days when I feel very insecure about our relationship, I still wish to give up and end it. Then Wolfgang would send me a funny email, and I'd realize that we're okay.

The odd thing is that the longer the relationship goes, the more insecure I become. My old abandonment fears, I know. So, we consider everything we do to make sure that we don't trigger my abandonment issues and my insecurities.

We're more patient with each other. He understands why I distrust him about certain things. So I'm more open about how I come to my own conclusions, which usually make me insecure, and he's more open to explaining why my assumptions are wrong.

Virtual-world relationships are no easier than real-world relationships.


Twelve years. I'm still here. Cheers.

10

In most cases, a decade seems so long. In this case, the past decade feels like a dream and I have just awoken.

And like "0" birthdays, this rezday anniversary is a milestone. But it feels anticlimactic.

No wise insights this time. I've already said everything I wanted to say.

No compelling projects that make me jump out of bed. Something else always has higher priority than SL projects that had once excited me.

No significant lover to entice me to log in. Many lovers don't log in anymore. And I keep blue-screening too much lately anyway.

I'm making a point of meeting SL friends when I travel or when they come to my area. But, besides that, I feel like, "Been there, done that. What's on Netflix?"

Out in the real world, people are getting excited about 3D, 360, virtual reality, augmented reality. But that's old news to us. The curse of the early adopter is boredom.

What else is there?

Can we find the deeper purpose for all this? Instead of aiming for the next technological thing for the sake of the technology, can we find a meaningful application that really matters?

Maybe it's also my real age. I'm at a phase in my life where my attention is supposed to be directed outward, to changing the world and making it better, to leaving a legacy, to making a much bigger impact.

Whatever that is, I have no idea. Yet.

I'm waiting for inspiration.

For the next decade of my SL.

Nine years and more firsts

It's almost anti-climactic. It's about 5pm Pacific Time as I write this, and I just realized Opal is 9 years old today.

August may yet again prove to be significant in changing my SL. However, at the moment, things still feel uncertain.

It didn't help that my external hard drive crashed and it had most of my files. I kept meaning to back up them up online, but life happened and I never found the time. Now, it feels like I lost an arm.

I've had to recompile some data and download others from email and other sources. But the originals, like textures in high resolutions, might be gone. I'm at the mercy of Seagate's Data Recovery department.


The possible good thing is that I lost my to-do list too. And it was particularly long. So, this mishap somehow feels like a fresh start. I may have lost an arm, but I've also lost my shackles. The tasks are still there to be done, but, if I can't remember them, then my priority list is shorter. Somehow, that also helps me focus on what's really important.

Trying to find my bearings and getting organized again after that mishap lost a lot of time that I would have used in more productive things. So I missed the opportunity to release appliers for Yabusaka's mermaid tail at the same time the tail was released. And I didn't have time to recruit more service providers to create listings in AvaHyr.com, which I established in July. Both of these are still high in my priority list, in addition to my real-life job search. So they'll still happen, but in a more relaxed schedule.


And then there's Agent A. He became "Agent A" when he said "psst" and the spy roleplay started. I met him two months ago, and I told him that I preferred he remained my friend for a long time than be a lover for a short time. He agreed. Besides, I was still recovering from Wolfgang. But the RP kept going in that direction; blame it on my nature. :)  So, a week ago, I changed my mind.

This might sound typical for me. But not really ...

Because of one detail.... Next week, I meet him in real life. This would be the first time I'd meet a lover irl while the affair is going on in SL.

And another detail.... Just call me Stella, and I'm getting my groove back.

Standing infinity

I celebrated my 8th rez day anniversary by dancing naked. :D

And did you realize that the number 8 is like the infinity symbol standing on one end?

Maybe there's something of infinity in this rez day anniversary. I'm past the 7-year itch, if there's such a thing about being a virtual world resident.

I spend less time as Opal now, and less time inworld in general. But my heart is still in there. My loves are still there. It's still the place I yearn for when I get homesick. Sure, most of the places are different now, but there's still a certain ambience about virtual reality.

And because August always seems to start a new life for me, maybe the coming year would be something different. After my experience in Utherverse, I've had a paradigm shift, similar to the paradigm shift about the global community that I've had when I first joined SL. This time, the shift I experienced is about the universality of virtual worlds.

During my conversation with Knightman in Utherverse, I was surprised at how strongly he was attached to UV, just as I am very attached to Second Life. UV is home to him, just as SL is to me. I realized that, in the end, the place we call our virtual "home" has nothing to do with the technology or the avatar or what the place looks like. It has to do with the relationships that bind us to it.

In the end, these different virtual world grids are just villages, colonies, and tribes of humans, separated by differences in technology, just as villages, colonies, and tribes are separated in the real world by distances.

In the end, we are all humans behind the avatars -- a soul touching another soul.