rezzday musing (cross-posted from LiveJournal)

It is my rezzday tomorrow. I joined Second Life on October 4th, one year ago, thinking it might be a cool way to chat. I always loved chat, but had been offline for several years. When I came back, none of the old crew seemed to be chatting any more. And then I remembered I'd heard about a thing called Second Life.

I really had no idea, I must say. I look at the people I know now, my new crew, and they all had some idea of what it was, and what it involved. I didn't think about things like content creation, I'd never heard the term. I wasn't a gamer, I was a chatter. I rezzed, rushed through Orientation, and set about changing the way I looked. Within days I was scooping up freebies and had found the "rebel enclave" on my home sim. That was where I could get a chat, certainly not at the mainstream events, where a tired old clique were running tired old events and getting their lols out of taking potshots at noobs. I look at how I looked then and I gotta laugh, but hey, I was trying. I'll tell you something else, through all that's happened since, I stil lurve noobs, and I still spend hours with them getting them to where they want to be.

I still went to the mainstream events, even though they were unrewarding. And on my fourth day there, Y approached me and offered me a better lip piercing (and thank God, cus you should have seen the bullring I was wearing). I don't remember what he was wearing (though I assume, now, it was the preppy set from Redgrave), I just remember his way of chatting. Articulate, concise, overly-courteous. Here, at last, was someone who could wield words!

Y was a month older than me, but had been "at" the game solidly. And he was a natural creator, with a creator's curiosity. Everything he'd learned to that point he told or taught to me. Everything he learned beyond that point, we learned together. For the first few days, we worked on the lip piercing, he, in his infinite way, tweaking and refining it, me wearing and re-wearing it, learning how to move prims and edit my appearance. When finally the piercing was right, what had been casual conversation and instruction became a true dialogue. And I was smitten. Oh ... so smitten.

It is a year later, and Y is mine no more. But what a year it was. All I've learned, all I gained, all I lost. All entwined with him, and with my utter adoration of him. All on the marvellous eye-popping grid, in every way, so much more than I had prepared myself for.