Lifekludging a breakdown - Second Life as Therapy
September 19th, 2006 | by dnw |Some readers might’ve wondered where the Lifekludger crash and burnt to.
Well, here’s a post from my personal blog that tells it all … and how I’ve been using Second Life to kludge my breakdown
Dave
Between a Laugh and a Tear
Well it would seem I’m slowing climbing out from whatever rock it was that landed on me.
For those not in the know, I had what the Doctor termed an ‘emotional breakdown’ and what I termed ‘falling apart’ about 6 weeks ago. I ended up in hospital for chest pain and stayed there a few days while I was physically checked out. That was all cleared and my body was sent home. This was just a manifestastion of stress really and my body’s way of telling me I had to slow down fast!
The Doc ordered no work for a couple weeks which turned into four. It didn’t bother me, I had lost all interest anyway…in just about everything…and just about overnight.
I cleared decks by re-routing emails and getting other associates to keep eye on the servers at work. And set about doing nothing. This isn’t usually something I’m used to..or like. But this time…well I just couldn’t care any longer.
I ended up spending my days with my head switched off in Second Life (SL). And it was my answer in this period, my therapy. I needed something that didn’t take any analytical brain power and yet could occupy me enough just to relax. I found a whole new side of me, a side that had been buried under that rock I talked of for 25 years. I knew from outset that the word ‘expression’ was a key, but didn’t know what that meant. SL gave me a new way of expression and of freedom from the constraints that come with my disability and those constraints I’d built myself as a way of either escape or coping.
Slowly over time as my body healed and my brain slowed down, I was able to have time for feeling to return, for issues to bubble up and stare at in the face and realisation to surface.
It’s all a bit freaky, hippy and messy - but needed…and good. Not that it feels it at the time…or even now.
So, how am I now? Well, John Mellencamp puts it best:
Between a laugh and a tear
Smile in the mirror as you walk by
Between a laugh and a tear
And thats as good as it can get for us
And there aint no reason to stop tryin
Typing isn’t the easiest thing for me and one reason I have the podcast is as a way of expression that doesn’t take so much time and physical effort. So I’m going to talk a bit more from time to time on there about it.
So now, things are going to have to change - if nothing changes nothing changes and we end up getting the same results we always do. Cutting back on work as much as my finances will allow will be part of it. Changing the way I do things and finding new things to do that are diferent things will also be a part. Maybe even finding some work that doesn’t require so much of me, or at least so much of the same thing, so I can pay the mortgage yet live, might be a part of it.
All part of what Jackson Browne sings as being “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender“.
Dave
