A Real Honest to Gawd NooB??

Recently I was shopping with my friend Lisa. We were looking for a cool hand held camera with a good script in it, as we are both SL photographers. This search did not take all that long. Lisa had TP'd back to the studio and I was on my way when a stranger popped up in IM. "Excuse me, sorry to bother you but can you help me?"
I cammed around to see who was speaking. Could it be? In this new SL age of endless alts. . . . an honest to Gawd NooB?? It was obvious this was the case looking at the no prim hair, green helmet, purple tie dyed shirt and zebra pants (I wish now I had popped off a snapshot but at the time it seemed mean).
My knee jerk reaction was Oh Gawd, I don't have time for this. But then I thought . . . .yes I do. It is early Sunday SLT and I have nothing pressing to do. It is easy to forget that first day and what it feels like. Phillip Linden says it has been described to him as a little like trying to crawl across broken glass. So since I was in a private voice convo with Lisa I told her what was up and decided to hang for a moment or two and see what he had to say. At the very least it could make for an amusing story. There is not a woman is SL who has not heard a litany of horrid pick up lines. Although Lisa's is my all time favorite "You? Me? We make sticky now?" **ROFL** Her response? "No, no sticky for you." Classic.
Turns out the guy is genuine. The first thing he does is thank me for not being mean or ignoring him. I remember those days all to well. It is much like asking for directions in a foreign country when you barely speak the language. People brush past you and blow you off because what you need is too time consuming for their busy day. Then my heart breaks open as he asks me to help him get the helmet off. He has no mic yet, but we stumble through this in text somehow. The no prim hair is not much better. Suddenly there is so much I want to teach him, tell him and caution him about, but he would get totally overwhelmed I am sure. I feel as though I have found a lost puppy or a baby bird fallen from the nest. My nurturing side kicks into high gear.
Lisa is a former mentor and is a great help here. We drop him some inventory offers he could use. And some LMs, like Free Dove for decent freebies and The Shelter. A place that did not exist when we were noobs. All we had was help island and we quickly learned mostly what we were going to learn about there, was griefing. At The Shelter, it is a Noobie friendly place. He will meet mentors to answer his questions, it is a safe place to rez in and out for now and he will meet other Noobies sharing his experience. After about an hour I turn him loose. He thanks me again for being so kind. Awwwwww! I friend him. I am his first friend.
I go on about my day but that encounter drifts in and out of my head all day. The following evening I get a notice from my friend Crayden about his regular DJ gig at the Portland Connection. This is my home in RL and is popular with a lot of RL Portlanders. So it not only has the look of RL Portland but the feel too. The people are friendly, kind and supportive. I had been too busy lately to go, but I was not at the moment so I decided to drop in. My Noobie friend pops online. What a great place to bring him! So I send and IM invite.
Ok what happens next is painfully cute! First he thanks me yet again, then tells me he has a 'friend' to bring along. I smile to myself thinking 'Awwwww, does he think I am asking him out for a date? How adorable is this all going to get??' I tell him the more the merrier and send a TP. After he crashes a couple of times I finally get him there. His look has changed, still Noob but much improved. Then his friend TPs in. From her appearance and attire she is very new as well. I introduce them to the room as new friends and new to SL. I Frickin' LOVE Portland! Suddenly I am greeted by IMs about how refreshing and sweet it is to meet actual noobs. And of course everyone is friendly, understanding and kind.
I attempt to show them how to use the couples Intan, but as they are still learning how to operate their avatars and not yet mastered how to cam, they are all over the place like toddlers. Finally I see they have discovered the Intan and are practically on top of it. I am trying to IM about how to use it and finally give up and just watch. As he will rez a pair of couples poseballs she jumps on the pink one and her avatar animates. This obviously confuses him so he rezzes another set. Finally there are six sets of poseballs all around the Intan, She is jumping from one pink ball to another and he eventually ends up just sitting on the Itan itself!
In the room people chuckle gently to themselves and each other, remembering our own confusion of those noobie days. But no one is unkind. After a bit thanks he me and tells me he tells me that he is taking his lady friend to a beach he has found that he likes and that we will chat again soon. Again he tells me how kind I am. I say, "Nah, just payin' it forward to the folks who were kind and generous to me when I was new." That is debt that should not go unpaid.
I check in with him from time to time, just to see how he is doing. When last I saw him his look had changed again completely. He now has voice which makes everything easier as I told him it would. His voice sounds down to earth and sincere. He asks me few questions and I walk him through some processes. Being a gamer he catches quickly. I say "Very Good Padawan." Noticing he still does not have a profile pic I snap one off quickly, nothing fancy. I dink it on him and explain how to put it in his profile. He says "Thank you Jedi Master." **giggling**
I am pleased he automatically got the GeeK GrrL reference but say, "I am flattered but no, no master just lucky. If I do not know the answer I probably know someone who does. It is good to learn new things. It is good to have friends."
So next time someone in SL stops you and says "Excuse Me. . . ." Stop and help if you can. It is good to pay it forward and it is good to have friends.

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.