2 years through The Looking Glass

As we Second Lifers know, your first trip into second life feels much like how Alice must have felt; tumbling down the rabbit hole. Or how it felt to stand in Dorothy's shoes when she crashed into OZ. Accept I didn't land on anyone's sister. . .at least I don't think I did.
This venture does one of two things to a person. One either becomes overwhelmed, frustrated, utterly confused; logging off, never to return (there should be an orphanage for abandon Avatars). Or one is captivated and mezmorized, i.e. hooked.
My 2 year Rez date comes up this month, so obviously I fall into the latter catagory. I should take the opportunity here to point out that this blog is devoted to my adventures in Second Life (hereafter refered to as SL), and I will not be taking the time to explain SL jargon. It will just bog down the blog, so to speak.
After my first Rez Day everything just felt like a blur. Had it really been a year? Had 365 days of this surreal experience gone by in the blink of an eye? Yes indeed, because year two went by even faster. But it was not time wasted. I will not take time to run through my SL accomplishments (resume upon request). But suffice to say I do a lot of real work here. I met and worked with intelligent, gifted; established people from all over the planet and had opportunities real life never could have provided. SL really is a great place to network, once you learn how. But beyond that, there have been other real connections made. Friends. I hope I never loose the wonder of how we connect in virtual. Though it is defined as existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name. That is not how it feels at all. This is NOT a game. My virtual life has truly become a digital extension of myself.
In the last two years, through SL, I have grown not only professionally but personally as well. There are still people on my friends list from the very begining of my life here. I am pleased to report that I still maintain my very first friend {{waves @ Gabe}}. Along with joys and successes there naturally have been disappointments and heartaches too. But here again . . . that is life, virtual or not, because people are people.
No matter if you come to SL and decide to be a hedgehog or a 20 foot dragon, there is always a living human behind the pixels. One of the things SL has taught me is that the more we might try to hide, the more we eventually reveal. Here again, just like real life, everyone will tell you everything you need or want to know about themselves; you just have to be paying attention.
Over time I have created a few of alts for different reasons. But I found myself not using them {{Looks in SL search for 'Home for Abandon Avies'}} Dilana Llewellyn is who I am. My shape is not store bought. Every pixel has been manually tweaked, adjusted and fine tuned. My Avie is as much self expression as any other work of art. My name was carefully chosen for meaning, memorability and flow. Dilana Llewellyn is who I am.
I am proud of the work, embrace the heartaches, and cherish the friends. I wouldn't change a thing. Just like thumbing through an address book my friends list has a variety of contacts. I count myself very lucky to have a handful of people I can truly call friends. When real lifers roll their eyes and shake their heads about my 'Fake Life' or my 'Fantasy World' I have learned to shrug that right off. I am no longer embarrassed when I try to explain all this and I am looked at as though I just sprouted another head.
Just like the color of my eyes or the scar I carry from when I was five, SL has become part of who I am. I imagine it always will be in one way or another, unless Linden Labs for some reason decides to delete the grid. Even in a case like that I feel sure these relationships would continue on.
So in the middle of this month, I will gather with these friends in the giant moon that is my SL home. Logged in from assorted time zones, we will don our headset mics. All in high prims, we will animate our pixelated asses off! We will turn up the music, talk, laugh and celebrate First and Second Lives. I cannot wait for the year (s) to come my friends. I simply cannot wait.