If I wondered what all of my work in my Second Life employment had been preparing me for, it was Day One of the 2009 VWBPE- Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference. I and both of my alts were in full use all over the many venues of the conference. I was pressed into service this morning to sit in Muse Isle partner site, to allow an overhead display of the broadcast in a faculty access lab, as there were issues with sound access on some of the computers. At one point in time, all three of us were participating actively in some fashion simultaneously. I know I wasnt the only one testing personal limits of managing simultaneous IMs this afternoon. I was managing 3-6 IMs on 2 different log ins at two different conference venues, and following a presentation at still a third and slipping in a comment or two. Not something I would want to do hours on end – but today it would have to be classified as sheer fun. Ha ha – you millenials – you aint’ got nuttin’ on me.
Looking forward to what is coming up. 
by L-C on February 8, 2009
I don’t often dwell on the past. Perhaps it means I have been successful, to a degree, of incorporating the honimyo spirit into my psyche. Perhaps it is because simply that no one likes to revisit a nightmare.
To speak metaphorically, it is as if I was forced to cross all twelve lanes of a Los Angeles freeway. The price of my survival was to be transformed from a magical gazelle into a dusty banged-up turtle. My chances of survivial were slim. But I did. I have been making my turtlish way through life since. Most times I do not think of how far I wish to go versus how fast I can travel. Or how often I am forced to just stop. There are times though, I raise my eyes up and blink through the dust, and realize that it isn’t just a patch of iffy weather stirring up the earth. It is the herd of gazelles and all other long-legged creatures passing me by.
I know then, that they will probably reach those purple mountains in the distance, and perhaps even decide that they wish to go on somewhere else. I am reminded then, that I may never get there. My terrain today is greener and softer than in previous times. I have the company of the occasional butterfly and bird. I do not struggle so for every step. I treasure the beauty when I find it. I savor those moments deeply and passionately.
I get it though. My journey is NOT to be the one I wished for. It is going to be the one that it is. I do not have the simple luxury of ordinary choices. I have lived the sonnet:
| When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, |
| I all alone beweep my outcast state |
| And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries |
| And look upon myself and curse my fate |
The challenge is to remember that it is not the glass half full vs. the glass half empty. The simple truth of my life is that I still have the glass.
