Many years ago, I logged into an online world and began building an alternate life as a way to pass some time.  It became a place to escape the real world and create an alternate and better one.  This place isn’t a mission based world place but rather a place where you can do just about anything you can imagine.  Your only limitations are skill.

In that place, I found solace during a point in my life where my real life was less than ideal.  I didn’t realize it at the time but I was not dealing well with my real life and this became part of normal daily life and logging out was more like leaving what had begun to feel like reality.  In short, it became more real life and real life became more second life.  I got a little lost in it, knew it and didn’t care.

Fast forward many years later.  I hadn’t logged on in several years but my avatar was still on the server and it was as if I had just logged out for a day or two rather than years.  During my time in the past in there I had made friends, built a house on land, found a significant other and once met them in real life, had a fantastic time and stayed in touch for years after.  It seemed rather normal to me and the lines between reality and digital at the time were quite blurred.

Recently, I went back to a small town where I once lived.  It was so much like I had remembered but had changed a lot too.  A visit to the gravesite of my grandparents and great grandparents was just a bit too surreal.  I went back to the house my grandparents lived in and the memories were still there but the most important parts were missing…the people.   Things were certainly not the same by any means either.  It was a step back in time without the people I once knew that made up that point in my history.

Back to the digital experience of today…My new job involves online games and online gameplay. It’s part of the culture at work to find staff logged into a game world in one place or another and my choice was to log back onto the old world where I had once built a digital life.

The experience was a bit odd because I could see who had released me as a friend…much in the same we do in real life, they had let go and moved on…they have to.  It’s part of the human condition.  It’s part of what makes us, well, human.

I wandered around looking for a few old places where I had been before and had made those long time past friends.  Many of the places had been updated so much that they weren’t even near what they once were, changed or deleted so much that I didn’t recognize them at all.  It was as if I had died years ago and was back as a ghost only to see that what I once knew was forever changed.  In reality, it was changed and the truth is that it would be near impossible for that world to stay the same or even to be recreated it as the same as it once was.  It’s a digital rendition of real life and it’s never going to be the same as it ever was.  It can’t be and that is just based on the odds of people restoring every single data bit back to the way it was on all the servers at a time from the past.

I found pictures I had taken in there and they were the only reminders that really looked familiar at all.  Well that and the way I had dressed my avatar so long ago.  He hasn’t aged but certainly does look his age because of the ready made new designs offered to the new members.

I did find one place that the founder had given to another member and the founder either died in real life or had simply lost interest in the place they had built.  It still had much of the old feel that I remembered and I wanted to stay but there were no people there so I left.  The empty was too painful.  To many, the experiences I had probably seem strange but when you connect with people, the media you use doesn’t really matter.  Look at the way the world reacts when a publicly loved famous person presented by the media dies.  People feel it and react.

Logging back into Second Life after being away was a lonely experience because all the people I knew were no where to be found.  I have heard it said that there seems to be a “lifespan” for people there and I am beginning to understand why.  I’m not sure I would want to return once I had reached the point of feeling like the life I built around friends had been removed.  I also can now understand why sometimes older people in life might have similar feelings once they have been sidelined for a long enough time that the people in their lives are gone or have forgotten them.  Real Life changes at a steady pace and it’s important to stay involved and not get sidelined.

Find new things to do, explore, don’t stop living, always make new friends.  Don’t get sidelined and forgotten, do something good that leaves a mark on the world for the better.