I am going to SLCC on Friday and I am nervous. I have never met anyone from SL in the physical world before. Sure, I talk to some of my closest friends outside SL on a daily basis but I have never shared the same physical space much less shared a coffee with them. This may seem strange but its just how I am, I suppose.
I love my virtual life precisely because I don't have to think about my physical body. It doesn't matter and all of my personal hang ups about how I am too fat, too old, too this or not enough that just disappear. So, you can imagine how meeting friends from the virtual in the physical terrifies me. Not only do I have to deal with my own stupid hang ups but I also roll around in "now they will see the horrible truths I have been hiding all these years."
Please. I am fully aware how ridiculous all of this is so there is no need for supportive comments about how you have seen my RL picture and I am not the freak show participant my inner middle school girl imagines. I know. Really I do. Still, I obsess over what to wear and finding time to get my highlights touched up and on and on and on.....
This morning I came across the following sentence which stopped me in my tracks. I think this is going to be my new mantra.
"These days, I think the way I see the world is much more important that how I look to it." Kim Miles
3 comments:
I know how you feel! My first SLCC was terrifying. I didn't even use voice, much less talk regularly to people who would be attending.
After I got to the hotel, I sat in the lobby and watched people go by, too afraid to approach any of them. I could hardly identify anybody (except Sean, whizzing past in a kilt), and started to think it was a mistake to have come. Maybe I could just cancel my reservation and go home... Finally, I saw someone identifiable and not too scary: Cylindrian Rutabaga. Of course, by the time I worked up my courage to approach her, she was engaged in conversation with someone else. I hesitated and was about to walk away when that other person turned around and inspected my name badge. Before I could react, Lyndon Heart's voice said, "Feline! It's so good to see you!" And he hugged me -- suddenly not a scary stranger any more. Just like that, I was among friends, and how I looked, how I sounded, all of the things I had agonized over mattered a lot less.
Lyndon doesn't know that he kept me from fleeing SLCC that day. It was that genuine one-on-one connecting greeting, so important to me as an introvert, that literally saved the day.
So, yeah, it's scary. In fact, it's scary this year all over again. But it's like jumping into cold water on a summer day. The first plunge is the worst, I promise!
Ohhhhhh, you are going to be SO pleasantly surprised... :)
Jack Linden: Urgh, up crazy early for flight to the kingdom of Bostonia. SLCC this weekend.. should be a ton of fun.
Prokofy Neva: @jacklinden I'll be there!
Me: :o
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